I would first off like to "second" the opinions of those here who say "hire someone", but I would also like to throw my ideas out as well...
First off, plan for the number and type of users: how many (maximum) and whether these will be meeting attendees, training attendees, roundtable discussion attendees, etc. Knowing this information is vital to determining which room you will be situating the system in, the size of the room, the size of the table(s), the layout of everything, and the audio/visual/network requirements.
If you are planning on running meetings or rountables, mainly, then a standard long "boardroom" approach might work, but consider other options which might be more flexible. At one place I worked at, we had a room that worked well for training and large meetings which was set up as a "stadium" style raised platform workstations (that is, four tiered rows of "tables") with a rear-projected screen and surround sound system. It worked rather well for both meetings and training. There were identically configured PCs for all of the users (ghosted systems), and the trainer could "take over" one or all the machines for training purposes. With the raised platforms, everybody could see the screen without people's heads blocking it, and rear projection eliminated the "hairdo" blocking problem as well. Wires were hidden, and everything looked nice. However, it wasn't conducive to a "roundtable" meeting, because of the "straight" layout (you need a more circular layout for this) - the best compromise, if you have the space, then, is to use a "horseshoe" shaped, tiered layout for the users, with a central (or off to the side, or moveable) presentation podium/dais for the presenter, and a rear projected screen or large plasma screen.
Audio needs also should be thought of - for most uses, I would say ditch the idea of a stereo or surround system, and go for a clear sounding monophonic PA system, with wireless microphones (handheld, lapel, and perhaps headset). Mount several speakers in the ceiling and up front (near or behind the screen) so that everyone can hear equally well.
If you must use a front projection system, keep colors in mind, as well as the brightness of the projector. If the projector is overly bright, and you use light wall coloring, there might be glare issues. Perhaps, use a darker paint for the wall surrounding the screen...
Remember to have adjustable (dimmable) lights for the general room, perhaps with a spotlight or two for the front (to illuminate the presenter), as well as perhaps lights on the podium, and maybe individual lights for each user.
Give users enough room to be comfortable and actually work. In a "working meeting" this is doubly important. For network access, provide wireless connectivity. Try to eliminate wires as much as is practical and possible. Where it isn't, try to hide the wires. Also note that for video conferencing, you may want to have the PC grabbing the video be on a dedicated wired connection. You may also want this machine to be wholly separate from the machine doing the presentation (not always necessary, though - and sometimes, you will want both integrated together for collaboration).
Remember to set up for a wireless presentation mouse, and train your users how to use it. Get one with an integrated laser pointer. Something that I thought of, but I haven't seen (and I have too many projects to try to build one) is the idea of a "laser marker" for the screen - how often have you seen someone use a laser pointer to "circle" or "draw" around areas on a powerpoint presentation? Imagine if you could actually leave a "line" on the screen (a virtual marker)? A laser pointer, with the mouse button, with a camera focused on the screen and software tracking the dot of light...this kind of application has to already exist - if it doesn't, think of the possibilities...?
Provide comfortable chairs (they don't have to be expensive, but they should be fairly nice looking and comfortable to sit in and work in for 1-2 hour periods),
You can probably get someone who can weld (it's not hard)
I am not sure if you are commenting here on "getting someone" or "welding" - if the former, I appollogize for the following, but if the latter...
For a beginner, welding is anything but easy. Welding is a skill that takes a lot of practice and a bit of stamina as well. It takes a knowledge of metals and heat, how thickness of metal, temperature of the metal, the kind of metal (and in certain cases, if you are welding two similar, but not quite the same types of steel together, the knowledge of that), etc - to produce a good weld.
It takes practice to learn what a good weld looks like, and if you are stick welding, what the welding process sounds like to make a good weld (if your stick is too close, you will stick to the weld and short, too far, and you will sputter with less heat on the weld, producing a "cold" weld, which is weak).
Complete knowledge of all types of welding is not necessary, but knowledge is always a good thing - you have options of rod/stick welding, gas welding (using an oxy/acet rig generally - though there are such weird things as "Brown's Gas" generators for welding using hydrogen/oxygen mix), and wire-feed (which is basically rod welding, but with wire instead of a solid rod - sometimes with flux core, other times with argon for MIG work).
Welding is anything but easy, especially for a beginner. Wire-feed can probably be picked up quicker than the other methods, but I am biased to stick welding, because it teaches patience and control (in stick welding you have to learn to strike the arc, get it going, make the weld, see the weld, move the rod along the weld path, while simultaneously feeding the rod into the weld as you progress - very, very difficult to learn, takes a TON of patience - in wire-feed, you set a control to control the rate at which the wire is fed into the weld automatically - you still have to learn how to set the rate for the weld you are doing). When you are working with hot (very, very hot) metal - patience and control are essential. If you don't have both, serious accidents and injuries are inevitable (not that even an experienced welder won't have accidents - a big one is not being able to see a fire in the welding mask, the flame doesn't have a high enough heat to register).
I would also reccommend starting with a standard welding mask and learning to strike the arc "blind" (I swear, it is like a Jedi mind trick or something to strike that arc blind - one the arc is struck, you can *easily* see what you are doing then) - once you get comfortable with this, move on to an auto-darkening mask.
Also, one of the big mistakes beginning welders sometimes make is not wearing dark clothes (light clothes can reflect the arc light under the mask and cause a temporary, but painful condition, called "welder's blindness" - basically a UV exposure burn on the eyes), or using regular leather gloves instead of welding gloves (pick up that hot metal piece you just welded and feel the burn instantly!).
Finally - there is knowing how to gas weld and how to use an oxy/acet rig to cut steel and other metals (fun stuff!).
I don't say these things to make welding seem like it is too difficult - once you begin learning how to weld and start making things welding, you never look at metal the same way again. You start to see ways of doing things that can only be done with raw steel. You start looking at scrap metal parts and such in a completely different light - "ooh, shiny - what can I weld up with that!". I encourage anyone who has ever thought about welding to look into doing so - it isn't too expensive to get started (just don't go overboard with a 220V Hobart Wire-Feed rig on your first outing) - small welding projects can easily be taken on for under a $200.00 cash outlay for equipment. That will get you a small 110V AC buzzbox rod welder (fine for 1/16" to 3/8" welds), some 1/16" rod, a mask, a pair of gloves, a welding chipper hammer, and a wire brush. Some
The law is a vast, complicated subject, with many non-obvious doctrines.
One time a few years back I was given a ticket for speeding in California. I live in Arizona, and was returning from visiting a relative when I got the ticket. I was plainly in the wrong (I was speeding on the highway - however, it was one of those long lonely stretches in the desert between Yuma, AZ and BFE, California, with no other cars in sight - well, at least until I hit the speed trap under the overpass, of course) - but during the course of paying my fine (and doing an "online" drivers training course to keep the points off my record), I decided to look into the law I had violated...
To my disgust, as I was looking into the law - I found what "laws and statutes" really are:
SPAGHETTI CODE
There I was, looking at what appeared to be a set of functional code - but there was tons of "if-then"'s, the equivalents of "goto"'s, etc - if viewed as a piece of code, law would be the absolute worse piece of crufty legacy code there is! Couple this with the knowledge that there are tons of laws still on the book in all jurisdictions that have absolutely no bearing on current happennings (which could be analogous to old procedures in old code libraries/includes which are called only occasionally or never, in real code) - the fact that laymen can't understand it shouldn't be surprising.
What is surprising is a few things: that laymen can't use "ignorance" as a defense (though if as a layman you look at the law, it seems nearly impossible to make heads or tails out of it, even if you study it quite a bit, and of course case law -might- trump what you are reading, unless you know how to look that up, on and on and on...) - but further, that lawyers, judges, etc - ie, those who are charged with executing the law - actually make pretense at truely understanding it.
I submit that this is a lie, that these executors of the law are foisting upon us, the citizenry, a lie of monumental proportions - they act as arbitrators and interpretors of the laws, but I would be willing to bet that they are just or nearly as lost as we, the laymen, are.
Think about it: it is very nearly analogous to a large corporation with a a very old and crufty legacy COBOL-based computer software system, coupled with a 10Base2 twisted-pair network on an old IBM 360 mainframe running who-knows-what old incarnation of an OS - with a team of programmers, some old, most new - but even the old programmers were "newbies" when some of the last COBOL hacks were added, and the newer programmers are writing Java code to integrate with the legacy source - oh, and this system just happens to run a multi-national spread over 25 countries across the world.
Not one of those programmers could truthfully say they fully understand the system, and what effects adding a new piece of code or hack in will cause to the system as a whole. Not a single one of them could do it, and they couldn't even ask the original system developers, because most of them would be dead or senile, or otherwise unreachable (if anyone even knew who they were!).
The really sad part is that law, unlike code - can rarely be removed or otherwise refactored easily to see what that kind of a change would make. Most of the time, to fix a law, you have to cruft on more law, and hope that the "fix" doesn't break something else. Come to think of it - this is almost exactly like legacy code...
The only true way to fix it is to rip it all out and start over again with a fresh system - hopefully building on and learning from past mistakes and past poor procedures, so you don't repeat the problems. Unfortunately, what that means in law is revolution, typically armed, messy, and in more cases than not, the new system is a bigger broken mess than the old - rarely is it ever better.
Fittingly - just like replacing a legacy code system...
BTW - this project does appear to still be actively developed - look at the CVS changelog in the status area, which has recent commit dates and changes. Also, it appears that in addition to third-party data stores, a "native" data store can also be used...
Here is the site for MaVerick, the open source implementation of PICK (crazily enough, running under the Java VM!!!) - which also uses a regular DBMS as the backend (Berkeley DB, MySQL, PostgreSQL) - hmm - makes me wonder if they are simply doing what I said to try, but in a more maintainable manner...?
Have you looked into the PICK data model, aka MultiValue? May or may not be exactly what you need, but if you are needing more than rows and columns - this data model should be looked into.
It has been around since the late 1960's, in fact, one could argue that PICK (actually, PICK BASIC) was one of the first successful commercial instance of a "virtualized processor" system - that is, the PICK core was a VM that ran PICK assembler p-code (of a sort), and the VM was implemented in software running either as the OS or as part of the OS (ie, in *nix implementations) - and PICK BASIC applications were compiled to the p-code - and in theory (which actually worked quite well, IIRC), the compiled objects could be run on any PICK implementation (barring vendor-specific implementation details - always inevitable in this kind of situation, re: Sun Java vs MS J++). Another point of fact is that some companies (I think Fujitsu was one) created hardware implementations of the PICK VM - in other words, "PICK processors" - which obviously ran the code much faster than the software version.
I know that PICK is still available from various vendors (D3 is one - at least, it was not too long ago) - I also think an open-source version is in the works. It was long used for "green-screen", head-down vertical market type applications, but today there are other interfaces to it beyond a serial terminal (GUI, Web, etc). There are also companies who have created completely different DBMS systems based on the PICK data model, but not using PICK BASIC or all of the other old methods...
Finally, it is possible (though very kludgy, and I wouldn't reccommend it except as a way to "play" around) to simulate extra dimensions in a standard relational DB - set up a column as a TEXT or BLOB data type, then store the data in that, separated by a non-keyboard delimiter (ie, ASCII 254 or something). Parsing, insertions and deletions won't be easy (nor fast), but I would imagine one could set up stored procedures to handle such needs. It isn't pretty, it isn't reccommended, but it can be made to work as long as the data being stored isn't too complex...
If you want to see a really cool Javascript/AJAX/XMLHttpRequest application (alright - Google Maps and associated "hacks" and applications are excellent, too) - then TRIGLAV is it.
Personally, this game would be my favorite, except it doesn't work in Firefox/Mozilla (sorry, IE only) - I have tried to email the author about this, and I am sure others have as well - but either the problem is something he needs is IE specific, or he just doesn't give a damn. I hope it is the former...
Something I was recently playing around with on my Mandrake box, was the screensavers. One simulates an Apple IIe (with various crap being type, graphics, etc), the other simulates an old "TV", using screen captures, video captures (via video4linux), or a group of pictures.
On both of these screensavers, what was interesting was that the creator simulates very realistic "analog" effects - the twitching of NTSC, the "snow", the waveyness (like a filter cap is blown or something), the rolling, the fading in/out of an image, ghosting, etc. The Apple IIe saver looks like it is on an old TV - the topmost 40 column line is "bent" to the left of the image, and "wavers", like the signal, etc - is just out of tune.
For both screensavers, it is simultaneously hilarious, nostalgic (for those of us who have grown up on 8 bit machines connected to TVs), and interesting (from the point of view of simulating all of this so accurately on a "perfect" monitor) - both to watch and appreciate just how far we have come, in so short of time...
First off - forgive me if I read the wrong thing into your post - you seem like you could be of the transhumanist thought/philosophy, but disagree with some ideas of certain groups under that umbrella - or, you may think the whole thing is a load of hookam - I am not sure...
For the purposes of this discussion, let's disregard the possibility that there are "weird" quantum space-time effects going on that make us "sentient" or "intelligent" or "alive" (in the thinking/reasoning sense). We don't know enough, what little we do know is fantastic enough as it is, and we have a ways to go. For now, let us suppose that the model we currently have of us, that the human brain is a collection of neurons interconnected via synapses in a somewhat "random" (ok, this part likely isn't true - since we are a robust network like the internet, social networks, etc - see Albert Laszlo Barabasi's "Linked" for more detail) network of connections that were formed based on patterns formed from our sensory systems (see Jeff Hawkins' book "On Intelligence" for more detail) - is true, and go with that.
So, based on that - in theory - if we can recreate those patterns and connections, we can recreate what is "you", right?
Suppose we had a way to do this - some form of nanotechnology in which we could put into your bloodstream devices (nanoprobes on nanobots, say), that could flow to your brain, and everywhere a neuron was, these devices could "hook into", and figure out that "when I get this signal, I should fire", or "when these frequencies of signals occur, I should fire" - and which synapses, etc - the signal is to go to, etc. After a while, these machines learn to simulate precisely what the real neuron is doing, right? For intents and purposes, you could kill the real neuron - one at a time, or all at once - and the "nanobot" doing the simulation would be performing the same actions, correct?
It wouldn't matter if this happened slowly or quickly - as long as the simulation of the structure matched that of the original structure beforehand. These nanobots would also have to "learn" how memories are formed, etc - how such a structure changes, etc over time - but it is a given that if such machines existed and worked, that they could do this, most likely.
So, at some point, you would have a head full of nanobots, and nothing else - are you still you? Logic would dictate that yes, you are still you, that the substrate really doesn't matter. So - go the next step: Start simulating the nanobots in software on a hardware platform. Provided the platform was big enough, fast enough, and robust enough, and could emulate/simulate the entire nanobot and networked structure perfectly, you could "kill" or shut off the nanobots (one by one or all at once!), and the simulation is still "you"!
This isn't an original idea - it was first proposed (I believe) by Hans Morevec, one of the original explorers of the field of AI in the 1950's and 1960's. It is an interesting thought experiment, as in this theory, the "you" of you isn't really dependent on the "where", but on the structure of the network. As we learn more about the brain, new knowledge seems to confirm this. Still, there is plenty of room for something else to topple these ideas - but much of it to me seems to border on "intelligent design" theory (hah!), or plain ole' deception via complexity (via invocation of scary and strange concepts like QM). Of course, things can easily get even stranger - couple the writings of Barabasi, Hawkins, Moravec with the ideas presented in Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", perhaps along with some stuff from Kurzweil (Age of Spiritual Machines, among others), which seems more likely:
That we a strange "being" with a "soul" floating around waiting to be "called up" back to a mystical floating realm "out there"?
or,
That our brains, the "stuff" that makes us, is simply a very good pattern recognition, storage and playback machine, composed of a huge network of interconnecting nodes which we call "neurons"
Being able to keep backups, for any business, should be an easy and no-brainer thing to do. I can see why, for certain information, certain companies would want to have a policy limiting the time period, but for the technical side of things, there isn't any reason that a business couldn't backup all of their systems. In the end, it all comes down to $$$.
However, what is available for us ordinary users? When I mean "ordinary", I am not just speaking of "Joe Sixpack's" machine (who may or may not care about his data), but also those machines and small networks of machines that us geeks have around our abodes - how do you handle all of the data, in a cheap and reliable manner?
My network at home is small, and my boxes are tiny - but I still don't have a very effective backup solution. My current attempt, which I already see a weak and ineffective in even the short term, was a custom perl script run by crond on a nightly basis to backup any changes (by looking at the timestamps) to a tar.gz, then every weekend take the last tar.gz and burn it to a CD-R. Change CD-R's each week.
This wouldn't backup my entire system, but I envisioned it to backup certain areas of one of my systems, data that I wanted to designate as "valuable" to back up - stuff like mail folders, development data (source code and such), and other mostly-text files. Originally, I was looking at putting my mail folders onto this server (I use Mozilla), and remotely mounting the shares via samba. Then, have the backup software burn those folders as they changed.
The issue that I have run into is that I only have about 700MB per CD-R, and it doesn't do spanning, nor do I want it - I want the backup to be mostly unattended, if possible. I then started looking at my mail folders, and some of them were HUGE! 200-300MB for some - but when I would look at them in Mozilla - the numbers weren't correct! For instance, I have a folder that I use to store junk mail as identified by the junk filter in Mozilla. It automatically moves junk mail there, and I look it over before I delete the junk mail (sometimes I find emails from people whom I haven't communicated with in a while, or from random strangers, etc - but it isn't SPAM). So - there may be 100 spams in the folder, maybe a few hundred to a few meg or so of data, but the mail folder itself (via looking at the directory listing or via 'du') shows the size as something big - several hundred MB or so. It is like when I delete from these folders, the actual email isn't deleted, just a pointer or something in the file or elsewhere. Is this a bug or by design, I don't know...
But, it defeats my backup strategy, regardless, because other folders that I want to keep are also like this - I need them smaller, or I need a larger backup medium. I have looked into using old DAT drives, or into a DLT solution (I don't have the money for anything fancy) - DLT looks OK, DAT I have some drives and tapes for (not sure about a controller though), DVD+/-R is also a possibility, I have also thought about creating a redundant box to stream a backup to another drive on a nightly basis.
Basically, I am wanting to be able to keep a backup of some key files (not everything on the server, it isn't needed at this point), and maybe guard against accidental deletions/changes on a weekly basis (these aren't as important - I figure that if I need something that I deleted or changed, I will need it within a week - not several months down the line). What do others here use? Is it best to go with a tape system? Should I stick with a CD-R solution? Should I move to a DVD solution? Should I go with DAT or DLT? Or, would another box with some old hard drives in it be ok?
I realize that none of these ideas are meant for an "enterprise" solution, and I am not looking for that level of protection. I just would like to have something to protect some key data that I wouldn't like to lose. In many cases (like my development work), I take a "snapshot" of the data as the project(s) progress, and burn it to CD-R so that
Computing used to be my hobby, now it's a job. I haven't found another hobby to replace it.
Computers will always be my "hobby" - I personally can't see anything replacing that. Consequently, I fear if ever a day comes where I can't have a job (for whatever reason) that involves computers. At the same time, I entertain a fantasy of seeing the day when advanced AI makes my job unnecessary...
After work, I tend to do different things - sometimes I just kick back and relax. Sometimes this involves doing nothing, sometimes watching a bit of TV or a movie, or reading the paper, or a book. Sometimes, I come home and just hang around with my wife, talk about the day, spend time with her together. Sometimes we go out and do some shopping.
Other times, I come home, and I work on a project. I have waaaay too many projects (a quick perusal of my much out-of-date website will easily verify this). A couple of projects I am currently working on are a revamp of my website (which is involving me learning yet another language - PHP this time - to replace my current Perl-based site), in order to better host my projects and thoughts. So - there are two projects in one - a revamp of my site, and learning PHP. On top of this, I have been investigating and building an ROV based on a cheapo "monster-truck" RC vehicle. Right now, this vehicle has three RF systems for camera, pan/tilt servo system, and control of vehicle, which is very unwieldy, but it was a "proof-of-concept" done on the cheap (basic ROV system for under $50.00, actually). My next step is to go "whole-hog", which is going to necessitate integrating a PC running Linux, an Apache webserver, an 802.11x wireless connection, a USB camera, a PIC-based interface for drive motor, steering servo, and pan/tilt servo (which will necessitate me learning PIC assembler, and a setting up/building a system to dump the hex code, etc - ie, building a PIC-programmer from scratch, then learning to code it all) - then building a CGI interface (likely based on one of the "P" languages - Perl, Python, or PHP) to send commands to the PIC, and to receive images from the camera remotely...
That is only scratching the surface of my project list. I have so many projects, I am likely never to get bored or burned out (heh, my next plan for the RF video transmitter I have on my ROV currently is to try my hand at a video camera model rocket). Whether I will finish them is another matter, but these are things that are all geeky and in most cases, based around computers and electronics. I have several other projects waiting in the wings that don't involve these things, in case I want something really different (though these other projects tend to be expensive in scope - for instance, I need to replace *all* the rubber suspension bushings on my Bronco, along with some ball-joints on the steering system, among a ton of other things - ugh!).
Ultimately, these hobbies in most cases allow me to investigate and learn things that I might be able to apply to situations within my job. No, my job (as a software developer, BTW) may never need an ROV to roam the halls of the office. But - maybe my skills I picked up along the way doing PHP, Perl, Python, PIC assembler, etc - maybe those may come in handy for some project. Indeed, at my last job, I used various skills I have picked up to recover passwords lost by other employees (ie, my employer had me hack their systems). This wasn't something I ever expected to use on the job, but it happenned anyhow.
So - don't look for something to replace your hobby - look for things and projects to do away from work to augment your work based on your hobbies and interests. Look for additional hobbies as well, which might fit well into your interests (ie, in my case with my Bronco, I looked at it as a project vehicle, something nearly completely outside my experience, with the idea that I could learn as I went to fix it).
Here - I will give you an idea to start with: You are a network admin, so you must like to set up and run network
Would rather you refer to them as "Dominionists" - though, ultimately, a fascist by any other name...
Seriously - you want to investigate some scary stuff, do some googling on "Dominionists", as well as Dominionism. For extra "giggles", throw in names of prominent government officials (don't worry about the party affiliation - I would be more surprised if there weren't any liberals pushing for a theocracy than I would be if there were!) as search terms, and see what you see. Certainly, most of your hits will likely come from republican affiliates, but be vigilant and look for others.
The more I see of this, the more I wonder where we are going as a country. This is scary shit - it is the Dominionist agenda to use the voting apathy of average American citizen against them and place in power theocratic elements throughout our governmental organizations (local, state and federal), with the express purpose to undermine our government and the Constitution with the outcome of setting up a theocratic state in its place.
I am sorry, but this smacks of treason, against the our country and our citizens. Unfortunately, most don't know, many wouldn't care if they knew, and those that would care may be too few in number to do anything about it at this late date in our history. These people have been working at this for (ultimately) close to 100 years, but only recently, within the last 15 or so years, have they made a steady and progressive push to put this in place quickly and decisively.
If they are successful, and liberals and moderates among us do nothing, I see the future for the world a very bleak place. America will likely become a starving hell-hole, if we are lucky. If we are unlucky, we will likely get World War III, and the Dominionist's version of Armagedden - there will likely be no coming back from that...
Actually, I meant it in the form of a "Big Brother" cautionary tale, of "do-gooders" in the form of social programs (and government programs) coupled with business interests/watchdogs being a potentially bad thing. Maybe it wouldn't happen, likely as not the industry wouldn't care one way or the other, but then again, given the weirdness going on in society today, who's to say this wouldn't be sold as a "feature" to "keep the children safe" or something (maybe sold to legislators this way)?
I didn't write the story as well as I should have - the OP had two kids in the story, and I was trying to "play off" that - an older kid looking after a younger one, but no parents home. Alternatively, one could imagine a "latchkey kid" situation as well leading up to the "incident" - considering many parents do trust and leave their kids alone at home many times (my parents did it, your parents probably did it, and others do it today).
This is a crazy society we live in today - on the outside, many people and "the media" condemn parents for leaving kids at home alone (I am not meaning babies or small children here, but latchkey kids with enough smarts to get into a house with a key, or older kids trusted well enough to take care of themselves), but the reality of the situation is that many parents must do this (they either can't afford a babysitter or a nanny or similar). So, just like so many other things in this messed up societal view - some things are condemned with one hand, while condoned (with a wink) with the other...
Given the state of our society today, where everything must be "for the children!!!!1!11!ONE" - I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the dialog went something like this:
Boss (at cubicle): "Um, Susan - please come with me, there's a situation..."
Susan (getting up and walking): "Sure - what's going on, Bill...?"
Bill (walking down hallway to entrance with Susan): "The police are here, and they want to speak with you - is there a problem...?"
Susan (confused look on face): "Uh, no - Bill, what is going on...?"
Susan and her boss get to the front desk, where there are two uniformed officers and a unidentified man in a gray suit standing. One of the officers approaches Susan...
Officer (reaching for handcuffs): "Ma'am, please come with me - you are under arrest for child endangerment and abandonment."
Susan (frantic): "What! What do you mean?! Let me go! I haven't done anything wrong! My children are at home..."
Officer: "Ma'am, if you don't cooperate, you will also be charged with resisting arrest..."
By this time, some of Susan's co-workers have stopped and are watching the scene, but are otherwise oblivious to what is really going on - but they now think she is a bad mother...
Susan (to her boss): "Bill - what is happenning...?"
Bill shrugs his shoulders, obviously just as confused as Susan is...
Unidentified Man: "Ma'am, I am with Child Protective Services - I was notified by the DVD-CCA that your DVD player was registering repeated accesses to a locked DVD by a non-adult sized fingerprint, thus possibly indicating that no adults were present in the residence. We immediately dispatched one of our social workers to the residence to verify the presence of an adult..."
It's hard to argue with these kind of people, mostly because they've developed some kind of reality filter that doesn't let through anything that questions their beliefs. I've always assumed that without the filter, their psyche would collapse under the weight of the truth. You can try to pick away at the filter, but if you suceed they'll only become enraged at your for exposing the truth (and revealing to them their own filter, which they like to ignore).
If you want an interesting explanation for this behavior, a paper about the theory (dopamine addiction and "M0") is available here...
Now - I don't know how serious the authors are about this paper, and I have heard that it is a "bunch of bull" - but at the same time, these crys that it is false could be nothing more than M0 and dopamine addiction in those who are crying foul - because to acknowledge that such a thing exist is anaethema to its very existance, thus those already under the influence of M0 must decry it, otherwise M0 would perish.
It sounds so very much like a weird conspiracy - shadowy, implausible, etc - but if you read the paper, and make the assumption that the paper is "true" (regardless of the reality for the moment) - it seems to explain a lot of behavior in many people and the society in general around you.
Curiously, geeks in particular tend to not be affected by M0 - according to the theory this is why there is such bullying and such by others towards geeks (and similar creative driven individuals) because M0 needs dopamine addiction to continue to "live" - and where is isn't possible, a forced regemin of dopamine enhancement drugs are forced on these kids today to "get them into the fold", or if this isn't possible, other methods are used (ie, in other words it is possible to get a geek to become M0-positive - but such individuals are not naturally predisposed to it from the outset of life).
Something I have found interesting from the paper - even if it truely is a load of bull. If you study the theory enough, and are of such a bent, you can use the knowledge of M0 (and other works) to "pick away at the filter" - so to speak, but in a very refined way. In such cases, most of the time the individual will become "enraged" (and why is covered by the paper) - but in some cases, it is possible to cause the individual to have a mental breakdown or disconnect from reality in some manner. It is kinda like deliberately inserting a subtle bug into code, and watching the system slowly grind to a halt. From my experience, these people tend to go into a weird "looping" persona, that makes even less sense than their old persona. I imagine though, with proper application, it might be possible to cause such individuals to have complete mental breakdowns causing them to seek psychatric or similar care - or possibly, in extreme circumstances - suicide.
Read the paper - decide for yourself. Further realize that if M0/dopamine addiction truely does exist - that it is these self-same people who seem for some reason (probably because if it does exist, everybody else is "addicted") to "rise to the top" - becomeing the individuals high up in the power structure - CEO's and government leaders, even. Are we scared yet...?
I only hope and pray that it is fake - but the theory of M0 seems to explain/coincide with observations of people and society I have made - I know that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it is chilling to think about, nonetheless...
Does anyone here remember that researcher in Britain who was one of the pioneers of this "modular robot" technology?
I remember there being a/. article about him, and there were many nay-sayer comments here, about how his demonstrations were mockups using strings and such, and how would such a thing be useful, and he's faking it, etc. This was during the.com boom - 1998 or 1999, thereabouts...
Quietly, work continued on, with other researchers picking up on the "trend" if you will of these modular robot experiments - apparently, based on one posting in this thread, the Japanese research is fairly impressive, creating self-configuring robots which can walk, crawl, slither, roll, etc - all with basic modules.
Does anybody remember this researcher? Does anybody remember the derision his ideas were given (and it wasn't only from/. - IIRC, collegues and other robotics researchers were pooh-pooh'ing him, too)? Finally, does anybody know what he is doing now, and if he is having "the last laugh"?
The sit-down version of Hard Drivin' was pretty good, too, but the game was really just driving around on a course as fast as possible - I don't think the CPU power was there to have other cars and scenery.
Actually, I remember there being "other cars" - but not ones you raced (I don't think) - instead, they were on the "opposite side" of the road, coming at you (head on collisions, yay!) - also, I remember there being a mountain with a cow on the edge that you could "run over", and when you did that, it would "moooo"...
VPL, IIRC, was sold to Thompson Electronics, and the patents got flung far and wide
This is incorrect, VPL and patents were sold to Sun Microsystems (!) - as referenced in this release - which I am going to reproduce here, as well:
Key Messages for VPL announcement
* Sun has acquired from Thompson CFS and Greenleaf Medical, the complete worldwide rights to the patent portfolio and technical assets of VPL Research -- the pioneer of virtual reality technology and networked 3D graphics.
* Sun will incorporate the technology protected by the VPL patents, which extends beyond virtual reality to networked 3D graphics, human body based input and 3D window systems, in its own Java 3D API and networked 3D graphics products, as well as make the technologies available to partners in the same manner that it makes available technology developed directly by Sun.
* Sun has long been an innovator in the area of virtual reality, 3D graphics, and open standards. The first paper on virtual reality was written in 1965 by current Sun Fellow Ivan Sutherland and Java 3D is rapidly becoming an industry standard. The acquisition strengthens Sun's already strong intellectual property position in 3D graphics technology.
* Virtual reality and networked 3D graphics have impact beyond entertainment (arcades, web-based network games) to areas of MCAD, medical imaging, training and simulation, product development and testing -- any instance where large databases of representative information (often involving multiple senses) are used interactively across a network.
* This acquisition is important to Sun because it involves real-time computer-generated 3D synthetic environments, which many experts believe are rapidly becoming the user interface to the Internet. As this comes to pass, this technology will likely impact most commercial and non-commercial uses of computers for interactive communications in the next decade
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Sun Microsystems, Inc. Anne Little 650-786-6702 anne.little@corp.sun.com
Burson-Marsteller for Sun Jessica Kersey 650-287-4006 jessica_kersey@bm.com
SUN ACQUIRES VIRTUAL REALITY AND NETWORKED 3D GRAPHICS PATENT PORTFOLIO FROM INDUSTRY PIONEER
As Open Standards, These Fundamental Patents will Impact Interactive Consumer and Industrial Communications and Applications
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- February X, 1998 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced it has acquired the patent portfolio and other technical assets of the former VPL Research Inc., a pioneering firm in the field of virtual reality and networked 3D graphics, from Thompson CSF and Greenleaf Medical. Under the agreement, Sun has acquired the worldwide rights to more than a dozen key patents and related technologies. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The technology and patents relate to fundamental concepts of virtual reality and networked 3D graphics, including networked computer interaction, datagloves and other computer wearables, image rendering and manipulation, and standards for programming software for virtual environments. The acquisition represents the latest development in Sun's long history of innovation in virtual reality and networked 3D graphics. Sun Fellow Ivan Sutherland wrote the first paper on virtual reality in 1965, and Sun's Java 3D API is rapidly becoming an industry standard. In keeping with its policy of developing to and offering open industry standards, Sun intends to incorporate the VPL technologies into the Java 3D model and its other graphics products.
"The pioneering work that VPL Research and its founder Jaron Lanier did in developing virtual reality technology has a substantial carry-over benefit to the types of advanced graphics capabilities that Sun is developing, particularly in networked 3D graphics and 3D window systems, " said Michael Deering, Sun Distinguished Engineer. "As an open systems
...a used 1995 Buick Century V-6 that gets 25 miles per gallon (and passed the smog test with such flying colors that they made my wife run it through again because they didn't believe the numbers) - paid less than $3000 for it, too.
What is the point of owning a hybrid if it doesn't give you at least close to 50 (or above) mpg? To simply feel good? To simply feel "hip"? What BS...
Duuh, where you do think they're getting the hydrogen. Passing large amounts of power through water. They get Oxygen, too, but where does the power come from? Coal! Right.
They must be teaching only one method of hydrogen production in schools these days, that of "electrolysis". Strangely enough, this method seems to be the only method the public "knows" about to produce hydrogen. In fact, it is so "known", that one time I went to an alternative energy show here in Phoenix, and some representatives of "hydrogen technology" were showing that cute model (which one can buy Fry's Electronics and other places) which take a solar cell which generates electricity, electrolyses water, the H2 and O go into a PEM stack and out come power to turn a small moter/fan.
This is wrong...
The only kind of "commercial" hydrogen you will see generated this way is at a few test "fill up" stations in Europe (IIRC - or maybe Canada), and also "Brown's Gas" generators for industrial Hydro/Oxy welding and similar processes. Why don't you see it more?
Because it is a very inefficient manner of generating hydrogen!
Only in those instances (like industrial welding) where you can't easily store the cryo liquid form of the gases on site, and you need to use such a system on-demand, does it make sense to generate it in this manner. Those filling stations in Europe (or whereever)? A gimmick to placate a public which doesn't know any better. Anyone with half a brain can see that such generation of hydrogen is not a 100% conversion system of the power from the electricity to the hydrogen - powerline losses alone sink that idea, not to mention the fact that electrolysis is horribly inefficient. So where do we get most of our hydrogen?
Mainly from two sources - natural gas deposits and hydrocarbon cracking at refineries. When a natural gas well is "pumped" (well, it mostly isn't, because it is naturally under pressure, at least at the beginning), the first stuff to come out is generally hydrogen, then helium (which is REALLY running out fast), then the other gasses. These wells account for the majority of hydrogen.
Hydrocarbon cracking involves a process in which hydrocarbons are cracked via a superheated steam method at a refinery. It is a much more efficient method of getting hydrogen, but itself relies on hydrocarbon feedstocks, thus "fossil fuels". Though not used in industry anymore, it is also possible to crack water into H2 and O using superheated steam passed over red-hot iron. The conversion essentially creates a very big amount of rust (basically binding the oxygen to the iron), and isn't a practical method today, as it requires a lot of energy input into the system.
These last two methods would likely be better worked if coupled with solar furnaces or a nuclear heating system - indeed, even electrolysis becomes viable if a large enough source of electricity could be found that the losses are negligible to the entire output. Nuclear power is the answer here, but even it has a limited run in the long view.
The truth is, unless we develop some fantastic technology to do some real undersea exploration for fossil fuels (not likely), or we rape our coastlines via off-shore drilling (which leak - it is inevitable) - we are going to peak on all of our fuel sources at some point in the future (even coal, though it has a much longer future than the rest - but I wouldn't want to live in that hell - imagine 1800's Britain at the height of the industrial revolution, and all the ugly air - worldwide).
In a sane world, we would already be working to get off this planet and expand outward, while we still had the resources to acheive this and find other resources out on the other planets, moons, and asteroids. Somehow, though, I don't think this idea is going to bear fruit until it is much too late - we then become Easter Islanders...
Something else PARC invented, but which has yet to make a full impact on today's systems, was a concept they called "Tabs, Pads, and Boards".
Essentially, "Tabs" were little name tag like devices a user could wear, and via RF signals, other devices near the user could know when and where a user was within the environment, and change/react accordingly. Simple things like finding out where a person in an organization was, as well as turning lights on and off, was one use. More complex tasks, like phones having special ring tones and ringing that phone near the user in his ringtone, as well as computer systems the user sat down in front of becoming active with the user's last state (from the last machine he was at?) were also ideas bandied about.
Pads were essentially the same thing as today's PDAs - wireless input/output devices linked to the network via RF links, which could share information with other users. Thus, a scribble could be made and saved, or "beamed" to another user(s), perhaps in a business meeting or such.
Finally, boards were something like an "electronic whiteboard" - where a user could draw on the board (actually a large screen display with a light pen) and save the data - or beam it to other user's Pads - or recieve scribbles from others Pads...
Ultimately, the idea was a ubiquitous and pervasive, network aware computer-aided collaboration system for (mainly) office use - possibly with the goal of eliminating paper from the office. With everybody having a Tab, a Pad, and access to Boards - collaboration and meetings could become real idea brainstorm and learning sessions. All data generated during the meeting, as well as viewed during the meeting, would be electronic, so the idea was that nothing would be lost, misinterpreted, mistyped, or any number of other things that could occur...
Today, do we have any of this technology? The obvious answer is that we have all of the technology available, for a price: Tabs are simply RFID tags of a sort (and one could even add a real LCD or OLED display to have them show messages as well), Pads are today's wireless PDAs and cellphones, and Boards exist today as (albeit expensive) electronic whiteboards. All the wireless networking system exist as well, we also have IP phones and such...
Basically, we have everything available, except for an integrated software solution to tie everything together so that it operates as a cohesive whole - as well as a price point that makes it affordable for regular businesses to make them switch to it over what is currently done (standard whiteboards, flipcharts, maybe a projector and powerpoint).
I would be so grateful to have PARCs vision be the norm - the savings in time and hair pulling alone from losing information (either purposefully or accidentally) from regular whiteboards, to having it all be electronic, would be worth it...
If we make that assumption (and currently I don't think there is any way to test it), that is, the Universe is not receiving any outside energy from another source to keep it going, then what happens when the entropy of the universe becomes "infinite"?
The honest answer is (aside from the fact that we don't even know whether the Universe is open, closed, etc) - we don't know, and there isn't any way to test this state here on earth, because any such experiment would exist within the Universe, and is thus not closed unto itself.
Now, I am not a cosmologist, physicist, etc - I am just talking out my posterior here, so what I say is most likely just a bunch of nonsense in this context. However, one of the current theories about what the universe was just right after the "Big Bang" (provided that theory holds, of course), was a "soup" of "quauntum foam" - that is matter was composed of quantum bits - quarks, mesons, etc - that gradually "came together" due to various base forces (electromagnetic, gravity, etc) - and formed more recognizable matter, which clumped together, and things cooled off, expanded, etc - ie, Entropy increasing.
As entropy continues to increase in this system - what happens when all the energy is gone? Does matter "fall apart" when entropy becomes "infinite"?
Ultimately - could the "creation" of the Universe be cyclic, going from Big Bang to Big Blackness to Quantum Foam to ??? to Big Bang?
Ok - so a lot of "what ifs", and I am probably completely wrong in my speculation and reasoning - so ultimately we may never know - and thus there will always be room at the bottom for adherents to religion (and philosophers, of course - though I place those individuals above religious practitioners - though sometimes they are one and the same)...
There is a common computer vision story (actually it was a neural network, but it still applies).
Actually, this story (the veracity of I do not know) predates our modern concepts of "neural networks" - that is, multi-layer networks of nodes (typically three - input, output, and intermediary layers), in which the nodes simulate neurons via weighted thresholds and other mechanisms for "firing" an output based on inputs aggregated over time and/or frequency - coupled with back-propagation "learning"...
Instead, the story seems to have popped up soon after the introduction of, in the late 1950's to early 1960's - of the ideas behind the perceptron, the direct precursor to modern neural networks. Historical perceptrons could be conceptually visualized as simple, single layer neural networks.
So, your original statement applies, but I wanted to clarify where and how this story seems to have originated (computer science, on the whole, seems to be one area of research where almost nobody knows, remembers, nor seems to care - about its history, thus we seem to be forever reinventing the wheel in many areas). You find it brought up as an apocryphal story everywhere in liturature about neural networks, seemingly no matter how far back you go, until you get into the Minsky era (late 1950's - early 1960's) of such machines.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, plan for the number and type of users: how many (maximum) and whether these will be meeting attendees, training attendees, roundtable discussion attendees, etc. Knowing this information is vital to determining which room you will be situating the system in, the size of the room, the size of the table(s), the layout of everything, and the audio/visual/network requirements.
If you are planning on running meetings or rountables, mainly, then a standard long "boardroom" approach might work, but consider other options which might be more flexible. At one place I worked at, we had a room that worked well for training and large meetings which was set up as a "stadium" style raised platform workstations (that is, four tiered rows of "tables") with a rear-projected screen and surround sound system. It worked rather well for both meetings and training. There were identically configured PCs for all of the users (ghosted systems), and the trainer could "take over" one or all the machines for training purposes. With the raised platforms, everybody could see the screen without people's heads blocking it, and rear projection eliminated the "hairdo" blocking problem as well. Wires were hidden, and everything looked nice. However, it wasn't conducive to a "roundtable" meeting, because of the "straight" layout (you need a more circular layout for this) - the best compromise, if you have the space, then, is to use a "horseshoe" shaped, tiered layout for the users, with a central (or off to the side, or moveable) presentation podium/dais for the presenter, and a rear projected screen or large plasma screen.
Audio needs also should be thought of - for most uses, I would say ditch the idea of a stereo or surround system, and go for a clear sounding monophonic PA system, with wireless microphones (handheld, lapel, and perhaps headset). Mount several speakers in the ceiling and up front (near or behind the screen) so that everyone can hear equally well.
If you must use a front projection system, keep colors in mind, as well as the brightness of the projector. If the projector is overly bright, and you use light wall coloring, there might be glare issues. Perhaps, use a darker paint for the wall surrounding the screen...
Remember to have adjustable (dimmable) lights for the general room, perhaps with a spotlight or two for the front (to illuminate the presenter), as well as perhaps lights on the podium, and maybe individual lights for each user.
Give users enough room to be comfortable and actually work. In a "working meeting" this is doubly important. For network access, provide wireless connectivity. Try to eliminate wires as much as is practical and possible. Where it isn't, try to hide the wires. Also note that for video conferencing, you may want to have the PC grabbing the video be on a dedicated wired connection. You may also want this machine to be wholly separate from the machine doing the presentation (not always necessary, though - and sometimes, you will want both integrated together for collaboration).
Remember to set up for a wireless presentation mouse, and train your users how to use it. Get one with an integrated laser pointer. Something that I thought of, but I haven't seen (and I have too many projects to try to build one) is the idea of a "laser marker" for the screen - how often have you seen someone use a laser pointer to "circle" or "draw" around areas on a powerpoint presentation? Imagine if you could actually leave a "line" on the screen (a virtual marker)? A laser pointer, with the mouse button, with a camera focused on the screen and software tracking the dot of light...this kind of application has to already exist - if it doesn't, think of the possibilities...?
Provide comfortable chairs (they don't have to be expensive, but they should be fairly nice looking and comfortable to sit in and work in for 1-2 hour periods),
I am not sure if you are commenting here on "getting someone" or "welding" - if the former, I appollogize for the following, but if the latter...
For a beginner, welding is anything but easy. Welding is a skill that takes a lot of practice and a bit of stamina as well. It takes a knowledge of metals and heat, how thickness of metal, temperature of the metal, the kind of metal (and in certain cases, if you are welding two similar, but not quite the same types of steel together, the knowledge of that), etc - to produce a good weld.
It takes practice to learn what a good weld looks like, and if you are stick welding, what the welding process sounds like to make a good weld (if your stick is too close, you will stick to the weld and short, too far, and you will sputter with less heat on the weld, producing a "cold" weld, which is weak).
Complete knowledge of all types of welding is not necessary, but knowledge is always a good thing - you have options of rod/stick welding, gas welding (using an oxy/acet rig generally - though there are such weird things as "Brown's Gas" generators for welding using hydrogen/oxygen mix), and wire-feed (which is basically rod welding, but with wire instead of a solid rod - sometimes with flux core, other times with argon for MIG work).
Welding is anything but easy, especially for a beginner. Wire-feed can probably be picked up quicker than the other methods, but I am biased to stick welding, because it teaches patience and control (in stick welding you have to learn to strike the arc, get it going, make the weld, see the weld, move the rod along the weld path, while simultaneously feeding the rod into the weld as you progress - very, very difficult to learn, takes a TON of patience - in wire-feed, you set a control to control the rate at which the wire is fed into the weld automatically - you still have to learn how to set the rate for the weld you are doing). When you are working with hot (very, very hot) metal - patience and control are essential. If you don't have both, serious accidents and injuries are inevitable (not that even an experienced welder won't have accidents - a big one is not being able to see a fire in the welding mask, the flame doesn't have a high enough heat to register).
I would also reccommend starting with a standard welding mask and learning to strike the arc "blind" (I swear, it is like a Jedi mind trick or something to strike that arc blind - one the arc is struck, you can *easily* see what you are doing then) - once you get comfortable with this, move on to an auto-darkening mask.
Also, one of the big mistakes beginning welders sometimes make is not wearing dark clothes (light clothes can reflect the arc light under the mask and cause a temporary, but painful condition, called "welder's blindness" - basically a UV exposure burn on the eyes), or using regular leather gloves instead of welding gloves (pick up that hot metal piece you just welded and feel the burn instantly!).
Finally - there is knowing how to gas weld and how to use an oxy/acet rig to cut steel and other metals (fun stuff!).
I don't say these things to make welding seem like it is too difficult - once you begin learning how to weld and start making things welding, you never look at metal the same way again. You start to see ways of doing things that can only be done with raw steel. You start looking at scrap metal parts and such in a completely different light - "ooh, shiny - what can I weld up with that!". I encourage anyone who has ever thought about welding to look into doing so - it isn't too expensive to get started (just don't go overboard with a 220V Hobart Wire-Feed rig on your first outing) - small welding projects can easily be taken on for under a $200.00 cash outlay for equipment. That will get you a small 110V AC buzzbox rod welder (fine for 1/16" to 3/8" welds), some 1/16" rod, a mask, a pair of gloves, a welding chipper hammer, and a wire brush. Some
One time a few years back I was given a ticket for speeding in California. I live in Arizona, and was returning from visiting a relative when I got the ticket. I was plainly in the wrong (I was speeding on the highway - however, it was one of those long lonely stretches in the desert between Yuma, AZ and BFE, California, with no other cars in sight - well, at least until I hit the speed trap under the overpass, of course) - but during the course of paying my fine (and doing an "online" drivers training course to keep the points off my record), I decided to look into the law I had violated...
To my disgust, as I was looking into the law - I found what "laws and statutes" really are:
SPAGHETTI CODE
There I was, looking at what appeared to be a set of functional code - but there was tons of "if-then"'s, the equivalents of "goto"'s, etc - if viewed as a piece of code, law would be the absolute worse piece of crufty legacy code there is! Couple this with the knowledge that there are tons of laws still on the book in all jurisdictions that have absolutely no bearing on current happennings (which could be analogous to old procedures in old code libraries/includes which are called only occasionally or never, in real code) - the fact that laymen can't understand it shouldn't be surprising.
What is surprising is a few things: that laymen can't use "ignorance" as a defense (though if as a layman you look at the law, it seems nearly impossible to make heads or tails out of it, even if you study it quite a bit, and of course case law -might- trump what you are reading, unless you know how to look that up, on and on and on...) - but further, that lawyers, judges, etc - ie, those who are charged with executing the law - actually make pretense at truely understanding it.
I submit that this is a lie, that these executors of the law are foisting upon us, the citizenry, a lie of monumental proportions - they act as arbitrators and interpretors of the laws, but I would be willing to bet that they are just or nearly as lost as we, the laymen, are.
Think about it: it is very nearly analogous to a large corporation with a a very old and crufty legacy COBOL-based computer software system, coupled with a 10Base2 twisted-pair network on an old IBM 360 mainframe running who-knows-what old incarnation of an OS - with a team of programmers, some old, most new - but even the old programmers were "newbies" when some of the last COBOL hacks were added, and the newer programmers are writing Java code to integrate with the legacy source - oh, and this system just happens to run a multi-national spread over 25 countries across the world.
Not one of those programmers could truthfully say they fully understand the system, and what effects adding a new piece of code or hack in will cause to the system as a whole. Not a single one of them could do it, and they couldn't even ask the original system developers, because most of them would be dead or senile, or otherwise unreachable (if anyone even knew who they were!).
The really sad part is that law, unlike code - can rarely be removed or otherwise refactored easily to see what that kind of a change would make. Most of the time, to fix a law, you have to cruft on more law, and hope that the "fix" doesn't break something else. Come to think of it - this is almost exactly like legacy code...
The only true way to fix it is to rip it all out and start over again with a fresh system - hopefully building on and learning from past mistakes and past poor procedures, so you don't repeat the problems. Unfortunately, what that means in law is revolution, typically armed, messy, and in more cases than not, the new system is a bigger broken mess than the old - rarely is it ever better.
Fittingly - just like replacing a legacy code system...
BTW - this project does appear to still be actively developed - look at the CVS changelog in the status area, which has recent commit dates and changes. Also, it appears that in addition to third-party data stores, a "native" data store can also be used...
Here is the site for MaVerick, the open source implementation of PICK (crazily enough, running under the Java VM!!!) - which also uses a regular DBMS as the backend (Berkeley DB, MySQL, PostgreSQL) - hmm - makes me wonder if they are simply doing what I said to try, but in a more maintainable manner...?
It has been around since the late 1960's, in fact, one could argue that PICK (actually, PICK BASIC) was one of the first successful commercial instance of a "virtualized processor" system - that is, the PICK core was a VM that ran PICK assembler p-code (of a sort), and the VM was implemented in software running either as the OS or as part of the OS (ie, in *nix implementations) - and PICK BASIC applications were compiled to the p-code - and in theory (which actually worked quite well, IIRC), the compiled objects could be run on any PICK implementation (barring vendor-specific implementation details - always inevitable in this kind of situation, re: Sun Java vs MS J++). Another point of fact is that some companies (I think Fujitsu was one) created hardware implementations of the PICK VM - in other words, "PICK processors" - which obviously ran the code much faster than the software version.
I know that PICK is still available from various vendors (D3 is one - at least, it was not too long ago) - I also think an open-source version is in the works. It was long used for "green-screen", head-down vertical market type applications, but today there are other interfaces to it beyond a serial terminal (GUI, Web, etc). There are also companies who have created completely different DBMS systems based on the PICK data model, but not using PICK BASIC or all of the other old methods...
Finally, it is possible (though very kludgy, and I wouldn't reccommend it except as a way to "play" around) to simulate extra dimensions in a standard relational DB - set up a column as a TEXT or BLOB data type, then store the data in that, separated by a non-keyboard delimiter (ie, ASCII 254 or something). Parsing, insertions and deletions won't be easy (nor fast), but I would imagine one could set up stored procedures to handle such needs. It isn't pretty, it isn't reccommended, but it can be made to work as long as the data being stored isn't too complex...
Personally, this game would be my favorite, except it doesn't work in Firefox/Mozilla (sorry, IE only) - I have tried to email the author about this, and I am sure others have as well - but either the problem is something he needs is IE specific, or he just doesn't give a damn. I hope it is the former...
On both of these screensavers, what was interesting was that the creator simulates very realistic "analog" effects - the twitching of NTSC, the "snow", the waveyness (like a filter cap is blown or something), the rolling, the fading in/out of an image, ghosting, etc. The Apple IIe saver looks like it is on an old TV - the topmost 40 column line is "bent" to the left of the image, and "wavers", like the signal, etc - is just out of tune.
For both screensavers, it is simultaneously hilarious, nostalgic (for those of us who have grown up on 8 bit machines connected to TVs), and interesting (from the point of view of simulating all of this so accurately on a "perfect" monitor) - both to watch and appreciate just how far we have come, in so short of time...
As well her being "naked and petrified"...
For the purposes of this discussion, let's disregard the possibility that there are "weird" quantum space-time effects going on that make us "sentient" or "intelligent" or "alive" (in the thinking/reasoning sense). We don't know enough, what little we do know is fantastic enough as it is, and we have a ways to go. For now, let us suppose that the model we currently have of us, that the human brain is a collection of neurons interconnected via synapses in a somewhat "random" (ok, this part likely isn't true - since we are a robust network like the internet, social networks, etc - see Albert Laszlo Barabasi's "Linked" for more detail) network of connections that were formed based on patterns formed from our sensory systems (see Jeff Hawkins' book "On Intelligence" for more detail) - is true, and go with that.
So, based on that - in theory - if we can recreate those patterns and connections, we can recreate what is "you", right?
Suppose we had a way to do this - some form of nanotechnology in which we could put into your bloodstream devices (nanoprobes on nanobots, say), that could flow to your brain, and everywhere a neuron was, these devices could "hook into", and figure out that "when I get this signal, I should fire", or "when these frequencies of signals occur, I should fire" - and which synapses, etc - the signal is to go to, etc. After a while, these machines learn to simulate precisely what the real neuron is doing, right? For intents and purposes, you could kill the real neuron - one at a time, or all at once - and the "nanobot" doing the simulation would be performing the same actions, correct?
It wouldn't matter if this happened slowly or quickly - as long as the simulation of the structure matched that of the original structure beforehand. These nanobots would also have to "learn" how memories are formed, etc - how such a structure changes, etc over time - but it is a given that if such machines existed and worked, that they could do this, most likely.
So, at some point, you would have a head full of nanobots, and nothing else - are you still you? Logic would dictate that yes, you are still you, that the substrate really doesn't matter. So - go the next step: Start simulating the nanobots in software on a hardware platform. Provided the platform was big enough, fast enough, and robust enough, and could emulate/simulate the entire nanobot and networked structure perfectly, you could "kill" or shut off the nanobots (one by one or all at once!), and the simulation is still "you"!
This isn't an original idea - it was first proposed (I believe) by Hans Morevec, one of the original explorers of the field of AI in the 1950's and 1960's. It is an interesting thought experiment, as in this theory, the "you" of you isn't really dependent on the "where", but on the structure of the network. As we learn more about the brain, new knowledge seems to confirm this. Still, there is plenty of room for something else to topple these ideas - but much of it to me seems to border on "intelligent design" theory (hah!), or plain ole' deception via complexity (via invocation of scary and strange concepts like QM). Of course, things can easily get even stranger - couple the writings of Barabasi, Hawkins, Moravec with the ideas presented in Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", perhaps along with some stuff from Kurzweil (Age of Spiritual Machines, among others), which seems more likely:
That we a strange "being" with a "soul" floating around waiting to be "called up" back to a mystical floating realm "out there"?
or,
That our brains, the "stuff" that makes us, is simply a very good pattern recognition, storage and playback machine, composed of a huge network of interconnecting nodes which we call "neurons"
However, what is available for us ordinary users? When I mean "ordinary", I am not just speaking of "Joe Sixpack's" machine (who may or may not care about his data), but also those machines and small networks of machines that us geeks have around our abodes - how do you handle all of the data, in a cheap and reliable manner?
My network at home is small, and my boxes are tiny - but I still don't have a very effective backup solution. My current attempt, which I already see a weak and ineffective in even the short term, was a custom perl script run by crond on a nightly basis to backup any changes (by looking at the timestamps) to a tar.gz, then every weekend take the last tar.gz and burn it to a CD-R. Change CD-R's each week.
This wouldn't backup my entire system, but I envisioned it to backup certain areas of one of my systems, data that I wanted to designate as "valuable" to back up - stuff like mail folders, development data (source code and such), and other mostly-text files. Originally, I was looking at putting my mail folders onto this server (I use Mozilla), and remotely mounting the shares via samba. Then, have the backup software burn those folders as they changed.
The issue that I have run into is that I only have about 700MB per CD-R, and it doesn't do spanning, nor do I want it - I want the backup to be mostly unattended, if possible. I then started looking at my mail folders, and some of them were HUGE! 200-300MB for some - but when I would look at them in Mozilla - the numbers weren't correct! For instance, I have a folder that I use to store junk mail as identified by the junk filter in Mozilla. It automatically moves junk mail there, and I look it over before I delete the junk mail (sometimes I find emails from people whom I haven't communicated with in a while, or from random strangers, etc - but it isn't SPAM). So - there may be 100 spams in the folder, maybe a few hundred to a few meg or so of data, but the mail folder itself (via looking at the directory listing or via 'du') shows the size as something big - several hundred MB or so. It is like when I delete from these folders, the actual email isn't deleted, just a pointer or something in the file or elsewhere. Is this a bug or by design, I don't know...
But, it defeats my backup strategy, regardless, because other folders that I want to keep are also like this - I need them smaller, or I need a larger backup medium. I have looked into using old DAT drives, or into a DLT solution (I don't have the money for anything fancy) - DLT looks OK, DAT I have some drives and tapes for (not sure about a controller though), DVD+/-R is also a possibility, I have also thought about creating a redundant box to stream a backup to another drive on a nightly basis.
Basically, I am wanting to be able to keep a backup of some key files (not everything on the server, it isn't needed at this point), and maybe guard against accidental deletions/changes on a weekly basis (these aren't as important - I figure that if I need something that I deleted or changed, I will need it within a week - not several months down the line). What do others here use? Is it best to go with a tape system? Should I stick with a CD-R solution? Should I move to a DVD solution? Should I go with DAT or DLT? Or, would another box with some old hard drives in it be ok?
I realize that none of these ideas are meant for an "enterprise" solution, and I am not looking for that level of protection. I just would like to have something to protect some key data that I wouldn't like to lose. In many cases (like my development work), I take a "snapshot" of the data as the project(s) progress, and burn it to CD-R so that
Computers will always be my "hobby" - I personally can't see anything replacing that. Consequently, I fear if ever a day comes where I can't have a job (for whatever reason) that involves computers. At the same time, I entertain a fantasy of seeing the day when advanced AI makes my job unnecessary...
After work, I tend to do different things - sometimes I just kick back and relax. Sometimes this involves doing nothing, sometimes watching a bit of TV or a movie, or reading the paper, or a book. Sometimes, I come home and just hang around with my wife, talk about the day, spend time with her together. Sometimes we go out and do some shopping.
Other times, I come home, and I work on a project. I have waaaay too many projects (a quick perusal of my much out-of-date website will easily verify this). A couple of projects I am currently working on are a revamp of my website (which is involving me learning yet another language - PHP this time - to replace my current Perl-based site), in order to better host my projects and thoughts. So - there are two projects in one - a revamp of my site, and learning PHP. On top of this, I have been investigating and building an ROV based on a cheapo "monster-truck" RC vehicle. Right now, this vehicle has three RF systems for camera, pan/tilt servo system, and control of vehicle, which is very unwieldy, but it was a "proof-of-concept" done on the cheap (basic ROV system for under $50.00, actually). My next step is to go "whole-hog", which is going to necessitate integrating a PC running Linux, an Apache webserver, an 802.11x wireless connection, a USB camera, a PIC-based interface for drive motor, steering servo, and pan/tilt servo (which will necessitate me learning PIC assembler, and a setting up/building a system to dump the hex code, etc - ie, building a PIC-programmer from scratch, then learning to code it all) - then building a CGI interface (likely based on one of the "P" languages - Perl, Python, or PHP) to send commands to the PIC, and to receive images from the camera remotely...
That is only scratching the surface of my project list. I have so many projects, I am likely never to get bored or burned out (heh, my next plan for the RF video transmitter I have on my ROV currently is to try my hand at a video camera model rocket). Whether I will finish them is another matter, but these are things that are all geeky and in most cases, based around computers and electronics. I have several other projects waiting in the wings that don't involve these things, in case I want something really different (though these other projects tend to be expensive in scope - for instance, I need to replace *all* the rubber suspension bushings on my Bronco, along with some ball-joints on the steering system, among a ton of other things - ugh!).
Ultimately, these hobbies in most cases allow me to investigate and learn things that I might be able to apply to situations within my job. No, my job (as a software developer, BTW) may never need an ROV to roam the halls of the office. But - maybe my skills I picked up along the way doing PHP, Perl, Python, PIC assembler, etc - maybe those may come in handy for some project. Indeed, at my last job, I used various skills I have picked up to recover passwords lost by other employees (ie, my employer had me hack their systems). This wasn't something I ever expected to use on the job, but it happenned anyhow.
So - don't look for something to replace your hobby - look for things and projects to do away from work to augment your work based on your hobbies and interests. Look for additional hobbies as well, which might fit well into your interests (ie, in my case with my Bronco, I looked at it as a project vehicle, something nearly completely outside my experience, with the idea that I could learn as I went to fix it).
Here - I will give you an idea to start with: You are a network admin, so you must like to set up and run network
Seriously - you want to investigate some scary stuff, do some googling on "Dominionists", as well as Dominionism. For extra "giggles", throw in names of prominent government officials (don't worry about the party affiliation - I would be more surprised if there weren't any liberals pushing for a theocracy than I would be if there were!) as search terms, and see what you see. Certainly, most of your hits will likely come from republican affiliates, but be vigilant and look for others.
The more I see of this, the more I wonder where we are going as a country. This is scary shit - it is the Dominionist agenda to use the voting apathy of average American citizen against them and place in power theocratic elements throughout our governmental organizations (local, state and federal), with the express purpose to undermine our government and the Constitution with the outcome of setting up a theocratic state in its place.
I am sorry, but this smacks of treason, against the our country and our citizens. Unfortunately, most don't know, many wouldn't care if they knew, and those that would care may be too few in number to do anything about it at this late date in our history. These people have been working at this for (ultimately) close to 100 years, but only recently, within the last 15 or so years, have they made a steady and progressive push to put this in place quickly and decisively.
If they are successful, and liberals and moderates among us do nothing, I see the future for the world a very bleak place. America will likely become a starving hell-hole, if we are lucky. If we are unlucky, we will likely get World War III, and the Dominionist's version of Armagedden - there will likely be no coming back from that...
I didn't write the story as well as I should have - the OP had two kids in the story, and I was trying to "play off" that - an older kid looking after a younger one, but no parents home. Alternatively, one could imagine a "latchkey kid" situation as well leading up to the "incident" - considering many parents do trust and leave their kids alone at home many times (my parents did it, your parents probably did it, and others do it today).
This is a crazy society we live in today - on the outside, many people and "the media" condemn parents for leaving kids at home alone (I am not meaning babies or small children here, but latchkey kids with enough smarts to get into a house with a key, or older kids trusted well enough to take care of themselves), but the reality of the situation is that many parents must do this (they either can't afford a babysitter or a nanny or similar). So, just like so many other things in this messed up societal view - some things are condemned with one hand, while condoned (with a wink) with the other...
Boss (at cubicle): "Um, Susan - please come with me, there's a situation..."
Susan (getting up and walking): "Sure - what's going on, Bill...?"
Bill (walking down hallway to entrance with Susan): "The police are here, and they want to speak with you - is there a problem...?"
Susan (confused look on face): "Uh, no - Bill, what is going on...?"
Susan and her boss get to the front desk, where there are two uniformed officers and a unidentified man in a gray suit standing. One of the officers approaches Susan...
Officer (reaching for handcuffs): "Ma'am, please come with me - you are under arrest for child endangerment and abandonment."
Susan (frantic): "What! What do you mean?! Let me go! I haven't done anything wrong! My children are at home..."
Officer: "Ma'am, if you don't cooperate, you will also be charged with resisting arrest..."
By this time, some of Susan's co-workers have stopped and are watching the scene, but are otherwise oblivious to what is really going on - but they now think she is a bad mother...
Susan (to her boss): "Bill - what is happenning...?"
Bill shrugs his shoulders, obviously just as confused as Susan is...
Unidentified Man: "Ma'am, I am with Child Protective Services - I was notified by the DVD-CCA that your DVD player was registering repeated accesses to a locked DVD by a non-adult sized fingerprint, thus possibly indicating that no adults were present in the residence. We immediately dispatched one of our social workers to the residence to verify the presence of an adult..."
I might be confusing Hard Drivin' with Race Drivin' - which may have had the cow and oncoming cars...
If you want an interesting explanation for this behavior, a paper about the theory (dopamine addiction and "M0") is available here...
Now - I don't know how serious the authors are about this paper, and I have heard that it is a "bunch of bull" - but at the same time, these crys that it is false could be nothing more than M0 and dopamine addiction in those who are crying foul - because to acknowledge that such a thing exist is anaethema to its very existance, thus those already under the influence of M0 must decry it, otherwise M0 would perish.
It sounds so very much like a weird conspiracy - shadowy, implausible, etc - but if you read the paper, and make the assumption that the paper is "true" (regardless of the reality for the moment) - it seems to explain a lot of behavior in many people and the society in general around you.
Curiously, geeks in particular tend to not be affected by M0 - according to the theory this is why there is such bullying and such by others towards geeks (and similar creative driven individuals) because M0 needs dopamine addiction to continue to "live" - and where is isn't possible, a forced regemin of dopamine enhancement drugs are forced on these kids today to "get them into the fold", or if this isn't possible, other methods are used (ie, in other words it is possible to get a geek to become M0-positive - but such individuals are not naturally predisposed to it from the outset of life).
Something I have found interesting from the paper - even if it truely is a load of bull. If you study the theory enough, and are of such a bent, you can use the knowledge of M0 (and other works) to "pick away at the filter" - so to speak, but in a very refined way. In such cases, most of the time the individual will become "enraged" (and why is covered by the paper) - but in some cases, it is possible to cause the individual to have a mental breakdown or disconnect from reality in some manner. It is kinda like deliberately inserting a subtle bug into code, and watching the system slowly grind to a halt. From my experience, these people tend to go into a weird "looping" persona, that makes even less sense than their old persona. I imagine though, with proper application, it might be possible to cause such individuals to have complete mental breakdowns causing them to seek psychatric or similar care - or possibly, in extreme circumstances - suicide.
Read the paper - decide for yourself. Further realize that if M0/dopamine addiction truely does exist - that it is these self-same people who seem for some reason (probably because if it does exist, everybody else is "addicted") to "rise to the top" - becomeing the individuals high up in the power structure - CEO's and government leaders, even. Are we scared yet...?
I only hope and pray that it is fake - but the theory of M0 seems to explain/coincide with observations of people and society I have made - I know that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it is chilling to think about, nonetheless...
I remember there being a /. article about him, and there were many nay-sayer comments here, about how his demonstrations were mockups using strings and such, and how would such a thing be useful, and he's faking it, etc. This was during the .com boom - 1998 or 1999, thereabouts...
Quietly, work continued on, with other researchers picking up on the "trend" if you will of these modular robot experiments - apparently, based on one posting in this thread, the Japanese research is fairly impressive, creating self-configuring robots which can walk, crawl, slither, roll, etc - all with basic modules.
Does anybody remember this researcher? Does anybody remember the derision his ideas were given (and it wasn't only from /. - IIRC, collegues and other robotics researchers were pooh-pooh'ing him, too)? Finally, does anybody know what he is doing now, and if he is having "the last laugh"?
Actually, I remember there being "other cars" - but not ones you raced (I don't think) - instead, they were on the "opposite side" of the road, coming at you (head on collisions, yay!) - also, I remember there being a mountain with a cow on the edge that you could "run over", and when you did that, it would "moooo"...
VPL, IIRC, was sold to Thompson Electronics, and the patents got flung far and wide
This is incorrect, VPL and patents were sold to Sun Microsystems (!) - as referenced in this release - which I am going to reproduce here, as well:
Key Messages for VPL announcement
* Sun has acquired from Thompson CFS and Greenleaf Medical, the complete worldwide rights to the patent portfolio and technical assets of VPL Research -- the pioneer of virtual reality technology and networked 3D graphics.
* Sun will incorporate the technology protected by the VPL patents, which extends beyond virtual reality to networked 3D graphics, human body based input and 3D window systems, in its own Java 3D API and networked 3D graphics products, as well as make the technologies available to partners in the same manner that it makes available technology developed directly by Sun.
* Sun has long been an innovator in the area of virtual reality, 3D graphics, and open standards. The first paper on virtual reality was written in 1965 by current Sun Fellow Ivan Sutherland and Java 3D is rapidly becoming an industry standard. The acquisition strengthens Sun's already strong intellectual property position in 3D graphics technology.
* Virtual reality and networked 3D graphics have impact beyond entertainment (arcades, web-based network games) to areas of MCAD, medical imaging, training and simulation, product development and testing -- any instance where large databases of representative information (often involving multiple senses) are used interactively across a network.
* This acquisition is important to Sun because it involves real-time computer-generated 3D synthetic environments, which many experts believe are rapidly becoming the user interface to the Internet. As this comes to pass, this technology will likely impact most commercial and non-commercial uses of computers for interactive communications in the next decade
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Anne Little 650-786-6702
anne.little@corp.sun.com
Burson-Marsteller for Sun
Jessica Kersey 650-287-4006
jessica_kersey@bm.com
SUN ACQUIRES VIRTUAL REALITY AND NETWORKED 3D GRAPHICS PATENT PORTFOLIO FROM INDUSTRY PIONEER
As Open Standards, These Fundamental Patents will Impact Interactive Consumer and Industrial Communications and Applications
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- February X, 1998 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced it has acquired the patent portfolio and other technical assets of the former VPL Research Inc., a pioneering firm in the field of virtual reality and networked 3D graphics, from Thompson CSF and Greenleaf Medical. Under the agreement, Sun has acquired the worldwide rights to more than a dozen key patents and related technologies. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The technology and patents relate to fundamental concepts of virtual reality and networked 3D graphics, including networked computer interaction, datagloves and other computer wearables, image rendering and manipulation, and standards for programming software for virtual
environments. The acquisition represents the latest development in Sun's long history of innovation in virtual reality and networked 3D
graphics. Sun Fellow Ivan Sutherland wrote the first paper on virtual reality in 1965, and Sun's Java 3D API is rapidly becoming an industry standard. In keeping with its policy of developing to and offering open industry standards, Sun intends to incorporate the VPL technologies into the Java 3D model and its other graphics products.
"The pioneering work that VPL Research and its founder Jaron Lanier did in developing virtual reality technology has a substantial carry-over benefit to the types of advanced graphics capabilities that Sun is developing, particularly in networked 3D graphics and 3D window systems, " said Michael Deering, Sun Distinguished Engineer. "As an open systems
What is the point of owning a hybrid if it doesn't give you at least close to 50 (or above) mpg? To simply feel good? To simply feel "hip"? What BS...
They must be teaching only one method of hydrogen production in schools these days, that of "electrolysis". Strangely enough, this method seems to be the only method the public "knows" about to produce hydrogen. In fact, it is so "known", that one time I went to an alternative energy show here in Phoenix, and some representatives of "hydrogen technology" were showing that cute model (which one can buy Fry's Electronics and other places) which take a solar cell which generates electricity, electrolyses water, the H2 and O go into a PEM stack and out come power to turn a small moter/fan.
This is wrong...
The only kind of "commercial" hydrogen you will see generated this way is at a few test "fill up" stations in Europe (IIRC - or maybe Canada), and also "Brown's Gas" generators for industrial Hydro/Oxy welding and similar processes. Why don't you see it more?
Because it is a very inefficient manner of generating hydrogen!
Only in those instances (like industrial welding) where you can't easily store the cryo liquid form of the gases on site, and you need to use such a system on-demand, does it make sense to generate it in this manner. Those filling stations in Europe (or whereever)? A gimmick to placate a public which doesn't know any better. Anyone with half a brain can see that such generation of hydrogen is not a 100% conversion system of the power from the electricity to the hydrogen - powerline losses alone sink that idea, not to mention the fact that electrolysis is horribly inefficient. So where do we get most of our hydrogen?
Mainly from two sources - natural gas deposits and hydrocarbon cracking at refineries. When a natural gas well is "pumped" (well, it mostly isn't, because it is naturally under pressure, at least at the beginning), the first stuff to come out is generally hydrogen, then helium (which is REALLY running out fast), then the other gasses. These wells account for the majority of hydrogen.
Hydrocarbon cracking involves a process in which hydrocarbons are cracked via a superheated steam method at a refinery. It is a much more efficient method of getting hydrogen, but itself relies on hydrocarbon feedstocks, thus "fossil fuels". Though not used in industry anymore, it is also possible to crack water into H2 and O using superheated steam passed over red-hot iron. The conversion essentially creates a very big amount of rust (basically binding the oxygen to the iron), and isn't a practical method today, as it requires a lot of energy input into the system.
These last two methods would likely be better worked if coupled with solar furnaces or a nuclear heating system - indeed, even electrolysis becomes viable if a large enough source of electricity could be found that the losses are negligible to the entire output. Nuclear power is the answer here, but even it has a limited run in the long view.
The truth is, unless we develop some fantastic technology to do some real undersea exploration for fossil fuels (not likely), or we rape our coastlines via off-shore drilling (which leak - it is inevitable) - we are going to peak on all of our fuel sources at some point in the future (even coal, though it has a much longer future than the rest - but I wouldn't want to live in that hell - imagine 1800's Britain at the height of the industrial revolution, and all the ugly air - worldwide).
In a sane world, we would already be working to get off this planet and expand outward, while we still had the resources to acheive this and find other resources out on the other planets, moons, and asteroids. Somehow, though, I don't think this idea is going to bear fruit until it is much too late - we then become Easter Islanders...
Essentially, "Tabs" were little name tag like devices a user could wear, and via RF signals, other devices near the user could know when and where a user was within the environment, and change/react accordingly. Simple things like finding out where a person in an organization was, as well as turning lights on and off, was one use. More complex tasks, like phones having special ring tones and ringing that phone near the user in his ringtone, as well as computer systems the user sat down in front of becoming active with the user's last state (from the last machine he was at?) were also ideas bandied about.
Pads were essentially the same thing as today's PDAs - wireless input/output devices linked to the network via RF links, which could share information with other users. Thus, a scribble could be made and saved, or "beamed" to another user(s), perhaps in a business meeting or such.
Finally, boards were something like an "electronic whiteboard" - where a user could draw on the board (actually a large screen display with a light pen) and save the data - or beam it to other user's Pads - or recieve scribbles from others Pads...
Ultimately, the idea was a ubiquitous and pervasive, network aware computer-aided collaboration system for (mainly) office use - possibly with the goal of eliminating paper from the office. With everybody having a Tab, a Pad, and access to Boards - collaboration and meetings could become real idea brainstorm and learning sessions. All data generated during the meeting, as well as viewed during the meeting, would be electronic, so the idea was that nothing would be lost, misinterpreted, mistyped, or any number of other things that could occur...
Today, do we have any of this technology? The obvious answer is that we have all of the technology available, for a price: Tabs are simply RFID tags of a sort (and one could even add a real LCD or OLED display to have them show messages as well), Pads are today's wireless PDAs and cellphones, and Boards exist today as (albeit expensive) electronic whiteboards. All the wireless networking system exist as well, we also have IP phones and such...
Basically, we have everything available, except for an integrated software solution to tie everything together so that it operates as a cohesive whole - as well as a price point that makes it affordable for regular businesses to make them switch to it over what is currently done (standard whiteboards, flipcharts, maybe a projector and powerpoint).
I would be so grateful to have PARCs vision be the norm - the savings in time and hair pulling alone from losing information (either purposefully or accidentally) from regular whiteboards, to having it all be electronic, would be worth it...
The honest answer is (aside from the fact that we don't even know whether the Universe is open, closed, etc) - we don't know, and there isn't any way to test this state here on earth, because any such experiment would exist within the Universe, and is thus not closed unto itself.
Now, I am not a cosmologist, physicist, etc - I am just talking out my posterior here, so what I say is most likely just a bunch of nonsense in this context. However, one of the current theories about what the universe was just right after the "Big Bang" (provided that theory holds, of course), was a "soup" of "quauntum foam" - that is matter was composed of quantum bits - quarks, mesons, etc - that gradually "came together" due to various base forces (electromagnetic, gravity, etc) - and formed more recognizable matter, which clumped together, and things cooled off, expanded, etc - ie, Entropy increasing.
As entropy continues to increase in this system - what happens when all the energy is gone? Does matter "fall apart" when entropy becomes "infinite"?
Ultimately - could the "creation" of the Universe be cyclic, going from Big Bang to Big Blackness to Quantum Foam to ??? to Big Bang?
Ok - so a lot of "what ifs", and I am probably completely wrong in my speculation and reasoning - so ultimately we may never know - and thus there will always be room at the bottom for adherents to religion (and philosophers, of course - though I place those individuals above religious practitioners - though sometimes they are one and the same)...
Actually, this story (the veracity of I do not know) predates our modern concepts of "neural networks" - that is, multi-layer networks of nodes (typically three - input, output, and intermediary layers), in which the nodes simulate neurons via weighted thresholds and other mechanisms for "firing" an output based on inputs aggregated over time and/or frequency - coupled with back-propagation "learning"...
Instead, the story seems to have popped up soon after the introduction of, in the late 1950's to early 1960's - of the ideas behind the perceptron, the direct precursor to modern neural networks. Historical perceptrons could be conceptually visualized as simple, single layer neural networks.
So, your original statement applies, but I wanted to clarify where and how this story seems to have originated (computer science, on the whole, seems to be one area of research where almost nobody knows, remembers, nor seems to care - about its history, thus we seem to be forever reinventing the wheel in many areas). You find it brought up as an apocryphal story everywhere in liturature about neural networks, seemingly no matter how far back you go, until you get into the Minsky era (late 1950's - early 1960's) of such machines.