I never got a chance to play one of the sitdown units - all I ever saw were the standup units, and those always ran Dactyl Nightmare (there were other games available).
For those who are interested in the Virtuality/Amiga link - check out this page on the original Vituality 1000CS - (as an interesting aside on the Virtuality pods - the original standup pods are named 1000CS, while the sitdown units were named the 1000SD. The monitor stands also had a unit designation, but I don't remember what. Anyhow, when the 2000 series came out, the standup version was names the 2000SU, and the sitdown was named the 2000SD - I have yet to hear what the "CS" stood for on the original version).
BTW - you make the system sound worse than it actual was, if you check the link I just gave. Remember, this was 1991 - and these boxes were running on top-of-the-line Amiga 3000's with two (2 - one for each eye) custom graphics cards, spitting out a fairly high number of polys per second for the day. Furthermore, tracking was done with some form of Polhemus tracking system (perhaps serial based). In 1991, the Amiga 3000 was the best Amiga you could buy - it wasn't until a few years later that the 4000 and the 1200 came out. When the Virtuality 2000 series came out, they used what were basically 486's with custom graphics cards.
I can pretty much say for certain that the Amiga 3000 wasn't as stressed as you make it out to be. They may have even used a custom extra processor board to boost the speed some as well, but anyone who has ever owned and played with an Amiga knows that even with the stock graphics hardware, it was capable of doing things in 1985 that weren't being matched by PC's until the early 90's at best. This isn't fanboy posturing, either - it just wasn't until the availability of the 386, good VGA cards, and Gravis sound/cheap soundblasters that PC's and DOS could start to catch up. Basically, the Amiga was a nicely designed and integrated multi-processor computer, which had custom graphics and memory processors to offload processing from the main CPU. The PC up until the early 90's still was a mostly monolithic system where the CPU had to do everything, and until the appearance of cards that some of the processing could be offloaded on to, could not match what the Amiga was capable of. I am certain that if it could have, that W Industries, Ltd would have went with a PC solution (as they did - albeit after becoming Vituality Inc - with the 2000 series).
Finally - I must agree with you on the boom mounted "FakeSpace-like" arcade system - this is a much better design for the market that the Virtuality pod was aiming for. Virtuality was trying to become a market unto themseleves, becoming a location-based entertainment venue, similar to the Battletech entertainment centers. Unfortunately for the Virtuality pods, they required much more operator handling and cleaning, etc - whereas the Vortek V3 is pretty much a "step-up and go" type system, much more inline with the original Battlezone game system, with a bit more freedom. In other words, it intergrates better with standard arcade layouts than do the Virtuality pods, and requires less operator intervention. Still, there is the hygeine issue, but this is unlikely to ever go away unless a different approach is used...
Patent law does not allow anyone to build any patented device without a license, no matter what the purpose. Otherwise, you could use a patented device as part of some machine which you don't sell, but use to create something else you sell.
I have always understood that as long as you don't intend to sell or profit off of the device in question, you were free to build it. This is one of the tradeoffs for the right of a patent, the "open sourcing" of how to build your invention, so that while you have a monopoly to build and sell the invention, others can only build copies or near copies in the quest to better the invention, thus allowing them to patent the improvement and/or new invention resulting from yours. In many cases, you need to build the real thing before you can improve upon it, and patents spell out everything needed to do this. You, as an inventor/experimenter, however, can't just build and sell the patented invention. Furthermore, if you patent your improved device, your patent must reference other prior work in the art, either that which is unpatented (and thus you need to provide documentation from where it originated, perhaps references to magazine or other articles), or if it is patented, references to those patents and numbers.
I don't know about using such an "invention" to build other things - this may in fact be true...
Do you have any links or other documentation to back your assertion up? I am not saying you are wrong, I just have been under the impression that this wasn't the case, and I would like to be educated further on it if I am wrong.
A lot of you here have noted the idea of "disguising" a cell phone tower. Sometimes, this can actually work out well, if the company doing it takes in the local geography and where the tower is sited so that whatever it is disguised as blends in or attempts to blend in with the surroundings. We have a few here in the Phoenix area that look quite nice, compared to what they could look like (personally, I don't mind the look a cell phone towers - we are already in a dystopian nightmare, might as well look like it, too).
Anyhow - when such a tower isn't disguised well - the outcome can be disturbing and humorous at the same time. Recently, I went to visit a relative who lives in the Kansas City, MO area - as my wife and I were driving back to the airport to return home, I saw this huge (it had to be at least 100 feet tall if it was a foot) tree-like thing sticking up out from the middle of a woodsy area - it looked like an ultra-cheap pine xmas tree on steroids. Actually, now that I think about it, it looked like a tree from the game of Myst - where there is an enormously tall trunk, with about the upper quarter containing "branches" - but they stuck out at weird "cheap fake xmas tree" angles. I knew immediately that it was a cell phone tower - but why a "pine tree"? There weren't any pine trees around the area! Certain none that were that tall (I mean this thing just stuck out above everything - it was UGGGGGGLY!!!).
Kansas City might have good bar-b-que - but they can't hide a cell phone tower to save their soul...
If there is one thing on this earth that genetic enginearing should listen to, it's the scream of a squeamish woman who has just found a cockroach in her...
OK - maybe VR isn't what you thought it would be - it certainly hasn't become what I had hoped it would - I have a very healthy collection of VR stuff, from back in the day, mostly - hardware, software, and many magazines and books (as well as a complete collection of the old PCVR homebrew VR magazines).
No - we aren't enjoying our VR with full headtracked HMDs and fully tracked gloved interfaces, etc...
We are, however, experiencing VR in other forms - every time you fire up Doom 3 or some other FPS - you are using VR. Your interface is pretty desk-bound (what was at one time termed "desktop-VR") - but VR it is. Fully interactive, multi-player, fast 3D simulation - it is all there. What isn't is the interface.
Today, it is possible to still get HMD's, but you must be prepared to spend a lot - a good quality HMD will set you back a few grand, top level ones can go stratospheric in price. Most of the price issue has to do with it being a very tight niche market (mainly catering to the oil industry, medical industry, military, and auto industry as the main users) with few buyers. But there are enough players that you can get a decent 800x600 HMD for under $2000.00. If you are adventurous, you could also easily build your own HMD like we used to do it in the old days, using newer LCD display technologies (back then, we used low-res LCD TVs - today, you could easily do it with higher resolution PS2 LCD monitors).
Tracking is still a big issue - very few players in the market, and their systems are prohibitively expensive - a few grand to track two sensors in 6DOF (enough for head and hand tracking) - Polhemus and Ascension being the two main players which use pulsed magnetic systems (one does AC, the other DC) - all other players tend to using inbound or outbound camera or IR-sensor based systems.
There is also the issue of software - today, the big thing (besides simulation - such as in DARPA's Dismounted Soldier training project) is entertainment. Today's FPS games seem like a perfect fit, but because the interfaces don't exist, I don't expect many players to experience today's or even yesterday's FPS games on anything more than a monitor.
Finally, the main issue you don't see much of anything, tends to also be stagnation of the market due to IP and patent issues. Back in the early nineties, when VR was getting hot, many companies were latching onto the technology and patenting everything under the sun. VPL's patent portfolio was pretty huge - one of the main reasons glove interfaces never became big was because they held so many patents on the technology, especially for lightweight gloves, that nothing else was very commercially viable. They got lucky and invented a glove system that was lightweight and tracked fairly accurately (it had its own problems, though). Other companies did the same with tracking technology (ie, Polhemus and Ascension seem to be the only companies with magnetic tracking systems because they both patented the crap out of them - and rightfully so - such tracking systems are very difficult to construct and calibrate, both in hardware and software - one of the companies uses AC, the other pulsed DC - the only way around each other's patents - other companies went ultrasonic and IR based with inbound or outbound systems).
Then - the internet started taking off. Consumers and other users weren't seeing the "Lawnmower Man"-esque worlds promised (there is only so much a 386 or 486 can do), and the internet was gaining popularity - so were computers for that matter. All of that, plus the lack of hardware - caused VR to be eclipsed as a technology path, at least for the time being.
Those early VR companies? They either folded or became other things. VPL, IIRC, was sold to Thompson Electronics, and the patents got flung far and wide - but someone still owns them. The other companies, especially for tracking, managed to survive mainly because as the nineties continued and 3D gaming took off, there was a need for tracking systems for 3D input (modeling) as w
You know, I hear this quite often from people who have played the orignal (Virtuality 1000) "Dactyl Nightmare" - that the point of the game was no fun. Often, when I played it when all four pods were filled, I could see the other players (well, their "avatars") kinda looking around, but not doing anything. It was like they didn't have a clue what the game was about.
I will give you a clue - the pterodactyl was a small (though important) portion of the game.
The whole point of the game was "virtual paintball" - or what is today called a "fragfest" (albeit with much better graphics, sound, etc and many more players). The idea was to run around on the platforms, down the stairs (to the center platform), and using the "levitator disks" (or whatever they were) to manuever between the upper platforms - running around and shooting the other players. All the while, the 'dactyl was circling - and if you heard "he's coming!" in your headset, that was a clue to get under some cover somewhere (like under one of the arches or something), look up and around and try to shoot the bastard from the sky before he picked you up and dropped you to your doom!
I found the game to be very fun, but only when I was playing with people who knew what the hell the game was about. Yes, the equipment was very heavy and cumbersome. Yes, the resolution sucked (but at least it the field of view was large enough to immerse you - ie, 60 degrees horizontal). Yes, the tracking was laggy (and in cases, nausea producing. But the game...
More than once I played it and in five minutes had a great workout - DDR is probably the only current game today that could match it...
i'm just waiting for the time when some militia group takes over the gov and sets things right.
History has shown time and again that when such coups are successful within formerly democractic countries, the results tend to be less than what was originally wanted by the populace. In many cases, the country goes from a formerly democratic (but semi-corrupt) government, to a totalitarian dictatorship.
In many cases, the problems which led to the coup could have been fixed had the population been educated and/or cared enough to work within the legal framework of their country to get rid of the corrupted officials and elect officials which represented them, instead of other interests.
Sadly, in almost every case (and seemingly, in ours as well), the majority of the populace neglects this duty (and/or subverts it by electing officials to represent selfish interests, instead of interests to benefit themselves and their fellow man), and the slide towards the destruction of freedom continues.
Why do I care if people use open source vs. proprietary solutions?
Because there is a "war" going on, a war which the public knows or cares little about, a war which even many software developers do not seem to recognize, but it is one which threatens to alter the very meaning of a "personal computer".
I am a software developer - I do it not only for my livelyhood, but also as a hobby. I, like many other developers here, both young and old, started with my first computer (at the time, a TRS-80 Color Computer 2) to develop code. I remember reading books and magazines on coding, and, unlike today's younger set, typing in code (usually BASIC) from magazines, character by agonizing character. I learned to code in this way. I traded code with friends, and learned to convert between BASICs - from C=64 or Apple IIe BASIC to my CoCo's BASIC. I even played around with some funky graphics code found in a book on FORTRAN, which I converted to BASIC.
These are the skills I learned, from a diet of "open source", of a kind. No, it wasn't licensed in this manner, but it what got me started, and I am sure many others here got started in a similar manner.
Today, it is difficult to find code in this manner - to learn to code in this manner, simply because of the lack of magazines and the amount of code available on the internet. But the availability still teaches, and this is a good thing for budding coders.
But this isn't a good thing - ultimately - for the corporate interests. If you can code it yourself (using free tools along with source code) - or if you can find somebody who has already coded it, and is giving it away - why should you need to buy it? This is question that keeps proprietary software manufacturers up late at night...
I guarantee you, if they can find a way, they will do everything they can to make personal software development a thing of the past - whether that means licensing and regulation or what, this is what they want. It isn't just Microsoft - though they are one of the bigger players - it is any company that manufactures software - personal development is an affront to their business model, and must be stopped or severely limited. If they succeed - it will be a great loss for future generations of coders...
There was something special about typing in that first "Hello World"-like program on my TRS-80 - the mistakes I made, the corrections I had to do to get it to run - and then, it ran, and did something that I told it to do! A whole new world of excitement and wonder opened up to me, and 20+ years later I still remain fascinated...
So - I push for open source as part of my effort to fight the hidden "war" that proprietary software manufacturers are waging - I want my future sons and daughters (if they are inclined) to be able to sit at whatever is a personal computer, and still be able to fire up an editor or IDE and type in that first "Hello World"-like program, and see their eyes light up as they realize that they invoked "magic", and made the machine dance. By pushing for more use of open source software, I show my support for the model, and my efforts will hopefully help in some small part to stave off and possibly reverse the disturbing trends I see to lock down personal computers and turn them into meaningless "terminals" in a pay-to-play only world...
Really - you shouldn't do this (too dangerous) - but this is a possibility...
What you could do is limit the travel of your accelerator cable/linkage. Note, by the way, the such a modification could be dangerous, and/or possibly illegal - dangerous in that if you don't do it right (or if you do it right and it fails) - you could get in the situation of a "stuck" accelerator, which is a scary thing to have happen, if you have ever experienced it (has happenned to me before - not fun at all, especially if you are approaching a stoplight!).
But, basically, you want to find the length of the cable where you are at 55 mph (or whatever the speedlimit is you want to limit your car to) - don't ask me how you would do this, it probably isn't easy unless you have access to those "roller thingies" (can't remember what they are called right now) - that you "drive" on while the car is stationary (used for calculating many things, but most often used in emissions checking). Even so, this procedure would be dangerous at best...
Anyhow, once you know that, then you know how far you need to restrict your air intake valve (or carburetor intake valve, if your car is older) - how far the cable/linkage can rotate it until it hits your "stop" - then, install the stop. It could be a simple clamp or something on the cable, or it could be a screw stop or something to block the rotation of the pulley the cable or linkage is attached to.
You could try putting in an air-restrictor plate or such as well in the intake (say, covering up half your filter) - but things might get really wonky with that - you would run rich once the accelerator opened up the intake valve to attempt to let in more air (and the computer instructed the injectors to let in more fuel), but more air didn't come through - which could lead to all sorts of emmision related issues...
since the days of Amiga-based Arcade VR (what *was* the name of that system?)
The name of the original system was "Virtuality", at the time the company was named "W Industries, Ltd" and based in the UK. The original system used an Amiga 3000 with custom video graphics cards (one for each eye) and IIRC, a SCSI CD-ROM drive. The HMD used small (1 inch or so diagonal) color CRTs, which were optically folded into the eyes (periscope style). The tracking was done via a Polhemus mag tracking system.
These early machines were the Virtuality 1000 (sit down and stand up models available, depending on application). W Industries went through some reorganization, and became Virtuality, Inc or something like that - and released the sleeker Virtuality 2000 series system - which used custom video and sound systems being driven by a 486-based motherboard. The resolution was greater (640x480x256 colors - up from the 1000's 320x240 or so), the speed was better, and the equipment (the HMD mainly) was lighter. No more wrenching your neck as bad if you looked around quickly. The HMD used high-resolution LCDs and was lighter and smaller (compared the 1000's HMD). The tracking system stayed mostly the same - a Polhemus IsoTrak (or SpaceTrak?) system.
Virtuality, Inc then went through some more organization - eventually being sold to (IIRC) a Danish company (the software or something), and the hardware patents and manufacturing to a Missouri (USA) based outfit called Arcadian Virtual Reality. They then struck a deal or something with the Danish arm, and supposedly are working hand-in-hand, continuing the development of the system. There is now a 3000 series system - but it seems to be a souped up 2000 series system (resolution didn't increade on the HMD - though there are plenty of higher-resolution small LCD displays out there). Not sure where this whole thing is going to lead.
The owner of Arcadian VR is a pretty nice guy - it sounds like a pretty small outfit - he was kind enough to give me the pinout for the HMD connector after I bought a used Virtuality 2000 HMD off of an individual on Ebay - the connector is a strange connector (looks almost like a funky molex connector in a custom housing). He offered to send me more of the manual from the 2000, but I never heard back from him again - still, his offer and help was much more than I ever expected, and he let me in on a bit of the history of the whole system and company.
Hope this answers your question. You are right, though - not much has changed or advanced at all in the whole 3D and Virtual Reality realm - I even got a laugh out of that recent Raytheon hand tracking system - they are showing off what is more or less a standard inbound-looking camera 6DOF position tracking system (pretty standard for body position tracking and digitization for the game industry) and calling it "new" - I am sure there are improvements, but I would hardly call the idea "new" - but to a lot of people, I bet it would look like new, unless you followed this stuff for as long as what you and I seem to have done...
I can't remember the last time I had to compile a kernel specifically to get a piece of hardware to work (I think the last time I was using SuSE 6.3 or something - and I think I was doing a kernel upgrade at the time anyway)...
Today, most (all?) distributions support loadable kernel modules. If there is anything you have to compile, it would be the module itself, not the kernel. Most of the modules, though, are already pre-compiled - just pick and choose what you want, set up any flags or options (if needed), and go. You may have to frob a file or two in/etc if your installer is lame, but most do that for you today, too.
About the only time I can think where you have to recompile the kernel anymore is if you want to eliminate a bunch of options from shipped "stock" compiled kernels, so that things that aren't needed by your machine aren't included (ie, you like to run very lean and mean) - or if you have a *very* esoteric piece of old or interesting hardware that you want to be made a part of the kernel and none of the stock kernels handle it, or offer a kernel driver. That, or you want the module in the kernel for some other reason (performance or something, maybe - where a loaded module won't work for you).
When you own a car, you either learn how to change tyres and set a proper ignition anticipation angle (or whatever it is called in English)
IIRC, it is called "dwell" - and isn't something you are likely to have to change (or be able to change) unless your car is a pre-1980's distributor/points design.
You can even buy yourself counterpart of the "car with a hood welded shut" (Macintosh).
Want to really know what is scary? There is a fairly recent model Audi out there which has no hood - there is only a little access door on the side to check/change a few fluids (oil, coolant, and wiper fluid, I think). If you need to get anything more serious done to the car, you need to take it in to the dealer (!), where they have to basically remove the entire front body work of the car to get to the engine (!!). I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out that the screws are "special" and require a "special" tool just to remove them (I bet at some point they will be the first to use those new electronic/mechanical fasteners that I saw on here not too long back). I also wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't safety interlock switches that trigger the computer to not allow the car to start until they are reset by a special scan-tool - so even if you could get the front off yourself, fix the car, then put it back together, you would still need to take it to the dealer to get it to start up.
It is bastard companies like these that are making it difficult for those of us who like to work on vehicles, and it seems like it is only going to get worse as time goes by. One may say that an Audi is a "special case", since it is considered a "luxury" vehicle, and the owners aren't likely to work on their car any more than they would clean their own house. This "innovation" though will eventually trickle down into mainstream consumer vehicles.
The car with its "hood welded shut" is coming, and consumers are going to take it up the --- for it, too - I guarantee it...
What I mean by this, is that you can buy the rocket (D thru F engine model), launch kit (launch pad, controller, engines, igniters, batteries), and wireless video camera - and do something that while it has been done before by others, is still a cool thing to do for yourself.
First - the camera: For about $30.00 (approx. $10-20.00 for the camera, and $10-15.00 shipping, depending on seller), you can buy off of ebay drop-shipped from hong-kong a miniature 900MHz-1.2GHz wireless "sugar-cube" camera and receiver combo, which runs off of 9 volt batteries. The camera is designed to transmit a few hundred feet thru walls in a security setup - but outdoors up in a rocket you can expect around 1000 ft or so. This is the cheapest way of getting these cameras - don't bother with an american dealer, they will charge you $80.00 minimum, plus s/h - not a good deal at all.
The rest of your money will go into the rocket and launch needs - a larger scale Estes rocket will be perfect - you might even be able to get away with one of the egg lofters if you want (you might want to try a different/lighter battery tech for the 9V camera, though). Anyhow - you won't spend anywhere near $70.00 on everything - the rocket kit will be about $20-30.00, everything else will fill (or not) the rest of the cash.
Then - spend your time to build the thing. Remember to pad/protect the camera, and mount it securely (but make it airodynamic, too!). Mount the battery securely as well, so it won't rattle around and change your C/G mid-flight. You are going to want a rocket made for payload lifting or similar - something designed for the extra weight (unless you want to experiment!).
Take it to a field, set it up, check your camera feed (heh - maybe some extra cash could be thrown to a 12VDC video recorder - you want to record your first flight, right?), install the engine and igniter, begin your countdown - and get ready to enter an interesting aerial photography hobby!
Totally - I can see the secrecy needed for their projects, new and old - but I am not asking for a source code (or even schematic) dump here - just some pictures of their old machine in its historical (apartment) setting. Likely, their new machine(s) incorporates ideas/algorithms/learning from their old - and someone is likely to make some money off of it, so the need to protect this sensitive information. But a picture of the machine isn't going to tell anyone anything that can't be gleaned from the text of the New Yorker article, but they would help to put things in historical perspective for future generations. Besides all which, if there were really great secrets to protect, why would they show everything to the reporter/interviewer in the first place? They seem to be very open and generous individuals, and I agree that they would likely be the kind of people to invite you in, and discuss their work and yours - likely for hours upon hours on end, with tangents and everything (I would be just the sort of person to be "sucked in" to something like that - to the chagrin of my wife, unfortunately - but she understands, all the same). But they seem to have no interest in preserving their role in history in any concrete way. They are (seemingly) haphazard with their research and documentation - too the very point of dangerous fire hazard at best (they seem to have a "pack-rat" mentality to an extreme, at least when it comes to their research and notes - but they lack the proper skills to organise the same information). I can only hope that when it comes time, and they pass on, that their work is somehow preserved, and isn't seen by their heirs as a jumble of disorganized mess, best left to the garbage man to dispose of...
For the work on the tapestry, this is true - an exact copy (especially to the fineness that they really wanted - what was it, 50 microns?) was what is needed, for historical preservation as well as for research purposes. I don't fault the Brothers here.
However, with that said, I know individuals who do go to those same extremes with common, everyday simple problems, exactly as I described. A simple problem, and a complex solution is what, in their minds, is needed. They will then proceed to argue with you, pontificate on end the why's and how's, produce immense diagrams, force vector calculations, etc - needlessly spending hours upon hours on end on a problem. In many cases, these same individuals will come up with a technically correct solution, then say "Eh, its done!" - and never attempt to try it out to see if it would work. In their mind, it works, that's it! But without trying, how do they know? In the real world, such a solution may fail.
Furthermore, for most problems, it is a solution much greater and grander than what is actually needed. For the hypothetical nut/bolt problem - the solution is simple, tried and true, in use for many, many years, with little change. I agree, that for some problems (like say, removing a very rusty stud on an engine block that is 30 years old), you might want to give some consideration to the possibility that if you torque too hard, the stud will break off. But the sane person says "Well, that is a possibility, and if that happens, then I just need to drill it out and re-tap it - thems the breaks!", and just go for it. Otherwise, you will sit there all day and accomplish nothing.
Which is what many of these individuals (the Brothers are an exception it seems) seem to do...
Instead of using cookies, bury an argument in the links. If you set up the site to be completely dynamic, including all the links, one of the arguments passed in can be an MD5 "hash" based off the login and password entered by the user, with a time limit (depending on the site, anywhere from a day to a few hours) - add the time limit into the hash, and when the limit passes, the hash is no longer valid. As long as each and every page on your site first calls a security check routine (which they all should), it can first check that the hash is there, that the user is registered as "logged in" (via a flag on the DB) - that the hash matches the login/password/time/etc, and that the originating IP address matches (could be made part of the hash, too). This link hash system isn't perfect, but it doesn't require cookies and it can't be "guessed" at. One of its larger drawbacks is the possibility of two people using the same login from different machines via a NAT'ed link (so it looks like the same IP for both)...
I read both New Yorker articles, and still, no pictures, nothing - googling and GIS searches seem to help not one bit. It isn't that I doubt the claims, I have no reason to doubt them. However, one would think there would be more than just a few pictures. It is madenning.
I have watched the movie PI - and I know that in part it was based on these two. I think about the computer as depicted in that movie. I think about other people I have known and about myself. I have known people who have had "vast collections" of parts and computers, books and papers - scattered and ordered, on shelves, on the floor. I myself to an extent am that way (but I try to confine it to my workshop and my office - bits creep out now and then and I have to shoo them back). Some of those I have known, though - come closer to the Chudnovsky brothers than I do. Though they have, supposedly (given the lack of pictures), realized tools and such - I know of people who theorize tools, come up with gradiose plans, all the way up to almost the point of execution (bits of paper, writing, etc) - then do nothing with it, claiming the problem solved and moving on to the next. Such minds stagger me, because it indicates a certain level of laziness - but more so, because all the theory in the world will never prove whether the theory is realizable as fact. Many such theories that sounded like they would work fine actually broke down as they were realized in the real world - but later became workable as the real-world constructs were fiddled with, or as the real world advanced to allow for them. But how would one ever know without trying? It is frustrating to see this - to see the unrealized potential - to see the possibility of unrealized possible profit to be had from these ideas...
True, that some of this is the need for thinkers and doers - after all, even Tesla's ideas needed Westinghouse to profit from them (and this is frustrating further still - why couldn't Tesla or the multitude of others then and now cash in on their hard work themselves - why must they all die virtually broke and alone?). It doesn't have to be this way - but something about how these individuals (and group minds?) work seem to preclude this as the "way it must be"...or something.
Another note - the Cloisters wanted an ultra-high resolution image of the tapestry. I agree that for preservation reasons, it has to be exact. So I don't fault the Brothers for finding the small faults which would cause them much pain to reassemble the mosaic, and have to figure out a way around this - but this is an example of something else I have noticed in this class of brilliance - making mountains out of molehills. It seems that for any given task (no matter how simple it could be), these people insist on finding the most complex solutions possible to solve them. In the case of this tapestry - maybe that is the best thing (for future generations?). But even in everyday situations, it seems that simple solutions won't work for them - the solutions must be extremely complex, or it won't work. They also get terribly upset when you prove or show to them that a simple solution works equally as well and gets the job done faster (an example: a tight nut on a bolt needs to be loosened - these individuals will tend to go about needing complex tools or methods, theorizing forever on whiteboards on this or that angles and torque and whatnot, hours later with nothing accomplished - damnit all, just squirt a bit of wd-40 on it, stick a damn socket and wrench on the thing, add a pipe extension, and give it a bit of leverage and bust the bastard free).
I will give the brothers this: they at least will build their own tools and realize things - though I will always find it madenning that the only "output" we ever seem to hear about these people, despite their genious, seems to only come from the pages of the New Yorker magazine. It seems like they are almost fiction...
Why is it that despite the Chudnovsky Brothers claims, which no one doubts, there doesn't seem to be any pictures of their apartment supercomputer? Does it still exist? Is it still running? Is it still computing PI? One would think that a machine that allowed them to compute so many digits of PI would be "immortalized" with at least one image, right? Can anyone point me to pictures?
For a long time I had a Debian Woody box as my main machine at home - nothing very fancy, and I planned on upgrading it "soon" - just a P3-450 (slot 1!), 20 gig drive, and 768 MB of PC-133.
One day, I hear a rattle - uh, oh - fan going - I say to myself. I finally get some time and determine that it was the video card fan, so I bring the system to a halt, shut it down, remove the card, replace the fan, and reinstall the card - and at that point, the gods of the computer realm decided to take a big dump on me...
It rebooted fine, I logged in - but for some reason, every time I went to use Mozilla (and ONLY Mozilla!), the system would freeze up hard on me (couldn't even telnet in) - I had to cold reboot, and pray that fsck worked on my ext2 filesystem. Even when it did, due to it fixing various broken things, I ended up losing something somewhat important to me (my bookmark file, which was about 3 meg in size at that point - a ton of bookmarks, to be sure). Fortunately, that was all I lost - I quickly wised up and backed up the rest of my important stuff to my networked fileserver...
After a lot of putzing around, I narrowed it down to the motherboard (or maybe the hard drive controller) going bad. If I used another motherboard, everything worked OK. Unfortunately, that motherboard was the only one I had that would run a P3-450 - all my other boards only took P2's. I ended up biting the bullet and purchasing a new motherboard, CPU and RAM which I should have done a long time ago. I am still ticked at myself for losing my bookmark file, but it could have been worse, I suppose.
I ended up switching to Mandrake 10.1 from Debian (couldn't get proper drivers, etc for the new motherboard to work properly under Debian, and since I use KDE a lot, I liked the new version of KDE in Mandrake - but if/when they bring Debian back up to a new version of stable - I might just switch back - I just love apt-get and dselect, and the tons of packages and easy config)...
You may already have heard about this, but I want to pass it along. Some people say it is bunk, and to be honest, I don't know of any formal medical testing which has been done to support it one way or the other, so research it yourself if you haven't already, and you and your girlfriend make the decision. Personally, if it was me who was diagnosed with MS, I would give it a shot if I thought it was the case.
I know of a person, a neighbor kid in school who lived a few houses down - his mother had MS - real MS. It was a terrible thing to watch progress. I also know of another individual, who was diagnosed with it. I told him what I am going to tell you - the description fit him, he tried it, went back to the doctor, and they were baffled when his symptoms of MS had disappeared. Now - it could be a case of spontaneous remission, but he fit the profile, so he tried it, and it...worked? Who knows - but he is now better, which is what matters, right?
Enough - here is the issue: How much diet soda (or any other foods containing NutraSweet) does your girlfriend consume? If it is a lot, read on. If none or very little - I am sorry.
Basically, what it comes down to is wood alchohol poisoning (ultimately, poisoning by formaldahyde). How is this possible? Well, the process by which NutraSweet is made involves the use of wood alchohol as a solvent (look up the NutraSweet patent - the process is right there), which is then distilled off. However, the theory is that some of the molecules of the wood grain alchohol remains in the resulting NutraSweet. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem - until the NutraSweet is heated.
Whether by cooking (as in cakes or cookies containing it), or by the sun or a hot warehouse (pallets full of soda sitting behind the store, or in unrefrigerated trucks) - the molecules are driven out and then consumed. I think there is even postulation that body temperature alone might be enough to drive off the molecules...
The body then does the rest - converting the wood grain alchohol molecules into formaldahyde molecules, which slowly poisons the body, and interestingly enough causes symptoms which appear very similar (almost too similar) to MS...
As I said - I don't know how true this is, but I have heard way too many anecdotal stories about people having MS who drank a lot of Diet this or that, then stopped eating that food and got better "spontaneously". Some have said this is all a conspiracy raving rant - an urban legend or something. I haven't seen any documentation one way or the other to support the idea, so do some research on it if you want (google on "NutraSweet Poisoning" for a start - then drill down from there on the various information). Also, talk to your doctor(s) - see if they have any insights or opinions on the matter.
I do know this - if I was diagnosed with MS, and I knew I had been consuming large amounts of NutraSweet or Aspartame containing products - I would stop doing so immediately, and start drinking a ton of water to help "flush" my system. It is a small change to make that may help in the long run...
Finally - if this isn't the case for you and your girlfriend, I am sorry - but I wanted to make sure that you (and others) were aware of this theory/idea - in case it could help...
That "up front lump sum" is called an "advancement" - everywhere else in the the world, it is termed a "loan", and yes, most of the time it has an interest rate attached to it. This is how the labels screw the artists:
Artist is signed with label
Artist gets the advance as part of the contract, which stipulates the interest rate
Any (or most of) earnings the artist makes goes back into paying this loan
Artist is screwed
Why, you may ask? Because the amount going back in to pay the advance is usually just enough or a bit more than the amount of interest earned. It is like all the stupid people who have credit cards and pay the monthly minimum - the principal of the loan NEVER gets paid down, or very little gets paid down. Add in all the other fees that is taken from the earnings of the artist, which weren't included in the contract (unless the artist was very smart, or the label dumb, or some combination thereof), and the amount going to pay the advance might be even *less* than the interest being tacked on. Then, compounding sets in, and maybe a second advance is tacked on because a new hit is released or something (think of it as a second mortgage without the refinancement) - and the artist finds himself in as much debt (well, respectively - the amounts are probably higher, the the percentages are probably close to the same between income and debt) as the typically American consumer with too much consumer credit debt.
Ever wonder why you don't see too many "oldsters" being signed up to the labels? Sure, it has to do with image and relevance as much as anything - but I bet a ton also has to do with an adult knowing better (unless they too are a typical consumer with debt) and negotiating the contract so they don't get screwed with advances. A younger "kid" is easier to control in this way, because all they see are the bling and the idea of "free cash" in the form of advances, that aren't really free. Teens and young adults simply don't grasp the ideas of credit, loans, APRs, and compounded interest.
Hell, most American adults can't even grasp these simple concepts...
...a SteadiCam - for $14.00! I will likely need one of these, in the future, for a project I am working on. So here I am thinking "what makes a steadicam work, and can it be made smaller"? Knowing how much a real SteadiCam is, and seeing Make's price - I was thinking "there it is - what I need - or something close".
So - first I look up some information on what a SteadiCam is, how it works, what it consists of - then I am thinking, "ok, maybe they haven't miniturized it too much - likely something for a handheld camcorder, but still cool" - thinking maybe they took a Luxo-like lamp or similar thing, added beefier springs, mounted it to some hard vest system (maybe a football player's vest or something)...
When Make first came out, I looked at the reviews, I read what the first issue was supposed to contain, I looked at the layout - and I thought "Blah - cheap crap off a hundred web-sites out there, I already have subscriptions to Nuts and Volts as well as Servo Magazine - do I need this?", and I passed on it. I really didn't think that it could be a cool magazine, in comparison to Nuts and Volts which I have subscribed to since 1991...
Here is this article on a SteadiCam - and I was this close to subscribing, thinking maybe I was wrong. I guess now I am glad I took a moment to read the Ars Technica review and see what a "Make SteadiCam" was...
A camera on a pole with weights! While I can't fault it in theory (it does seem to do the job well based on AT's quicktime shots) - it just isn't a real SteadiCam or even close to it! Where is the iso-elastic articulated arm system? This could have been done so much better, so much cooler (though probably a little pricier - say $50-100.00 instead of $14.00)! Furthermore this doesn't help me with my situation, which needs small size (I have ideas here, though). It isn't a bad simple project, and to be fair, that is what it was presented as in the magazine...
But am I going to fork over money for something like this? NO WAY! I get way more out of Nuts and Volts as well as Servo Magazine - anything else can be done with some thought and googling. Hopefully Make will become better and more challenging, with more expansive articles with real meat...
Well - that is what I call mine, anyhow - I think they are one of the more interesting laptop designs. The SLT was available as a 286 or 386 (286/SLT and 386/SLT, respectively) - I am not sure if they ever had color screens or not (mine has a bluish/blackish-grey and white LCD). The laptop portion has a handle, a floppy drive, and IIRC you could have up to 8 meg of RAM. All the ports on the back (serial/parallel/video) - no sound, though beyond the PC speaker. Plus an internal hard drive, of course. No such thing as expansion slots or a mouse, either.
No idea what the original battery was like - I had to build my own battery from old cellphone ni-cads, and had to mod the case a bit to get it all to fit. I also managed to get the docking station (where you could add EISA cards and such). But the real treat was the keyboard...
It was detatchable! You could detatch the keyboard and it had a cord so you could position it how you wanted. In reality, it used a PS/2-style mini-connector (not sure how compatible it really was with PS/2 stuff), so the keyboard was like a mini-keyboard of sorts.
It was a great computer, and I played around with it and such a lot - even managed to use a form of Linux on it (my first Linux experience - it was Monkey Linux which ran on top of the DOS filesystem!)...
We don't actually speak it, its just a sham for the american tourists and the Gaelthact Grant man.
I am not Irish, I am an American - but I find the Irish language to be a beautiful sounding one. I am certain there are still a few people left in Ireland who do use it on a fairly regular basis, but I would imagine that it is a dying language, which for some reason saddens me...
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For those who are interested in the Virtuality/Amiga link - check out this page on the original Vituality 1000CS - (as an interesting aside on the Virtuality pods - the original standup pods are named 1000CS, while the sitdown units were named the 1000SD. The monitor stands also had a unit designation, but I don't remember what. Anyhow, when the 2000 series came out, the standup version was names the 2000SU, and the sitdown was named the 2000SD - I have yet to hear what the "CS" stood for on the original version).
BTW - you make the system sound worse than it actual was, if you check the link I just gave. Remember, this was 1991 - and these boxes were running on top-of-the-line Amiga 3000's with two (2 - one for each eye) custom graphics cards, spitting out a fairly high number of polys per second for the day. Furthermore, tracking was done with some form of Polhemus tracking system (perhaps serial based). In 1991, the Amiga 3000 was the best Amiga you could buy - it wasn't until a few years later that the 4000 and the 1200 came out. When the Virtuality 2000 series came out, they used what were basically 486's with custom graphics cards.
I can pretty much say for certain that the Amiga 3000 wasn't as stressed as you make it out to be. They may have even used a custom extra processor board to boost the speed some as well, but anyone who has ever owned and played with an Amiga knows that even with the stock graphics hardware, it was capable of doing things in 1985 that weren't being matched by PC's until the early 90's at best. This isn't fanboy posturing, either - it just wasn't until the availability of the 386, good VGA cards, and Gravis sound/cheap soundblasters that PC's and DOS could start to catch up. Basically, the Amiga was a nicely designed and integrated multi-processor computer, which had custom graphics and memory processors to offload processing from the main CPU. The PC up until the early 90's still was a mostly monolithic system where the CPU had to do everything, and until the appearance of cards that some of the processing could be offloaded on to, could not match what the Amiga was capable of. I am certain that if it could have, that W Industries, Ltd would have went with a PC solution (as they did - albeit after becoming Vituality Inc - with the 2000 series).
Finally - I must agree with you on the boom mounted "FakeSpace-like" arcade system - this is a much better design for the market that the Virtuality pod was aiming for. Virtuality was trying to become a market unto themseleves, becoming a location-based entertainment venue, similar to the Battletech entertainment centers. Unfortunately for the Virtuality pods, they required much more operator handling and cleaning, etc - whereas the Vortek V3 is pretty much a "step-up and go" type system, much more inline with the original Battlezone game system, with a bit more freedom. In other words, it intergrates better with standard arcade layouts than do the Virtuality pods, and requires less operator intervention. Still, there is the hygeine issue, but this is unlikely to ever go away unless a different approach is used...
I have always understood that as long as you don't intend to sell or profit off of the device in question, you were free to build it. This is one of the tradeoffs for the right of a patent, the "open sourcing" of how to build your invention, so that while you have a monopoly to build and sell the invention, others can only build copies or near copies in the quest to better the invention, thus allowing them to patent the improvement and/or new invention resulting from yours. In many cases, you need to build the real thing before you can improve upon it, and patents spell out everything needed to do this. You, as an inventor/experimenter, however, can't just build and sell the patented invention. Furthermore, if you patent your improved device, your patent must reference other prior work in the art, either that which is unpatented (and thus you need to provide documentation from where it originated, perhaps references to magazine or other articles), or if it is patented, references to those patents and numbers.
I don't know about using such an "invention" to build other things - this may in fact be true...
Do you have any links or other documentation to back your assertion up? I am not saying you are wrong, I just have been under the impression that this wasn't the case, and I would like to be educated further on it if I am wrong.
Thanks...
Anyhow - when such a tower isn't disguised well - the outcome can be disturbing and humorous at the same time. Recently, I went to visit a relative who lives in the Kansas City, MO area - as my wife and I were driving back to the airport to return home, I saw this huge (it had to be at least 100 feet tall if it was a foot) tree-like thing sticking up out from the middle of a woodsy area - it looked like an ultra-cheap pine xmas tree on steroids. Actually, now that I think about it, it looked like a tree from the game of Myst - where there is an enormously tall trunk, with about the upper quarter containing "branches" - but they stuck out at weird "cheap fake xmas tree" angles. I knew immediately that it was a cell phone tower - but why a "pine tree"? There weren't any pine trees around the area! Certain none that were that tall (I mean this thing just stuck out above everything - it was UGGGGGGLY!!!).
Kansas City might have good bar-b-que - but they can't hide a cell phone tower to save their soul...
If there is one thing on this earth that genetic enginearing should listen to, it's the scream of a squeamish woman who has just found a cockroach in her...
No - we aren't enjoying our VR with full headtracked HMDs and fully tracked gloved interfaces, etc...
We are, however, experiencing VR in other forms - every time you fire up Doom 3 or some other FPS - you are using VR. Your interface is pretty desk-bound (what was at one time termed "desktop-VR") - but VR it is. Fully interactive, multi-player, fast 3D simulation - it is all there. What isn't is the interface.
Today, it is possible to still get HMD's, but you must be prepared to spend a lot - a good quality HMD will set you back a few grand, top level ones can go stratospheric in price. Most of the price issue has to do with it being a very tight niche market (mainly catering to the oil industry, medical industry, military, and auto industry as the main users) with few buyers. But there are enough players that you can get a decent 800x600 HMD for under $2000.00. If you are adventurous, you could also easily build your own HMD like we used to do it in the old days, using newer LCD display technologies (back then, we used low-res LCD TVs - today, you could easily do it with higher resolution PS2 LCD monitors).
Tracking is still a big issue - very few players in the market, and their systems are prohibitively expensive - a few grand to track two sensors in 6DOF (enough for head and hand tracking) - Polhemus and Ascension being the two main players which use pulsed magnetic systems (one does AC, the other DC) - all other players tend to using inbound or outbound camera or IR-sensor based systems.
There is also the issue of software - today, the big thing (besides simulation - such as in DARPA's Dismounted Soldier training project) is entertainment. Today's FPS games seem like a perfect fit, but because the interfaces don't exist, I don't expect many players to experience today's or even yesterday's FPS games on anything more than a monitor.
Finally, the main issue you don't see much of anything, tends to also be stagnation of the market due to IP and patent issues. Back in the early nineties, when VR was getting hot, many companies were latching onto the technology and patenting everything under the sun. VPL's patent portfolio was pretty huge - one of the main reasons glove interfaces never became big was because they held so many patents on the technology, especially for lightweight gloves, that nothing else was very commercially viable. They got lucky and invented a glove system that was lightweight and tracked fairly accurately (it had its own problems, though). Other companies did the same with tracking technology (ie, Polhemus and Ascension seem to be the only companies with magnetic tracking systems because they both patented the crap out of them - and rightfully so - such tracking systems are very difficult to construct and calibrate, both in hardware and software - one of the companies uses AC, the other pulsed DC - the only way around each other's patents - other companies went ultrasonic and IR based with inbound or outbound systems).
Then - the internet started taking off. Consumers and other users weren't seeing the "Lawnmower Man"-esque worlds promised (there is only so much a 386 or 486 can do), and the internet was gaining popularity - so were computers for that matter. All of that, plus the lack of hardware - caused VR to be eclipsed as a technology path, at least for the time being.
Those early VR companies? They either folded or became other things. VPL, IIRC, was sold to Thompson Electronics, and the patents got flung far and wide - but someone still owns them. The other companies, especially for tracking, managed to survive mainly because as the nineties continued and 3D gaming took off, there was a need for tracking systems for 3D input (modeling) as w
You know, I hear this quite often from people who have played the orignal (Virtuality 1000) "Dactyl Nightmare" - that the point of the game was no fun. Often, when I played it when all four pods were filled, I could see the other players (well, their "avatars") kinda looking around, but not doing anything. It was like they didn't have a clue what the game was about.
I will give you a clue - the pterodactyl was a small (though important) portion of the game.
The whole point of the game was "virtual paintball" - or what is today called a "fragfest" (albeit with much better graphics, sound, etc and many more players). The idea was to run around on the platforms, down the stairs (to the center platform), and using the "levitator disks" (or whatever they were) to manuever between the upper platforms - running around and shooting the other players. All the while, the 'dactyl was circling - and if you heard "he's coming!" in your headset, that was a clue to get under some cover somewhere (like under one of the arches or something), look up and around and try to shoot the bastard from the sky before he picked you up and dropped you to your doom!
I found the game to be very fun, but only when I was playing with people who knew what the hell the game was about. Yes, the equipment was very heavy and cumbersome. Yes, the resolution sucked (but at least it the field of view was large enough to immerse you - ie, 60 degrees horizontal). Yes, the tracking was laggy (and in cases, nausea producing. But the game...
More than once I played it and in five minutes had a great workout - DDR is probably the only current game today that could match it...
History has shown time and again that when such coups are successful within formerly democractic countries, the results tend to be less than what was originally wanted by the populace. In many cases, the country goes from a formerly democratic (but semi-corrupt) government, to a totalitarian dictatorship.
In many cases, the problems which led to the coup could have been fixed had the population been educated and/or cared enough to work within the legal framework of their country to get rid of the corrupted officials and elect officials which represented them, instead of other interests.
Sadly, in almost every case (and seemingly, in ours as well), the majority of the populace neglects this duty (and/or subverts it by electing officials to represent selfish interests, instead of interests to benefit themselves and their fellow man), and the slide towards the destruction of freedom continues.
Because there is a "war" going on, a war which the public knows or cares little about, a war which even many software developers do not seem to recognize, but it is one which threatens to alter the very meaning of a "personal computer".
I am a software developer - I do it not only for my livelyhood, but also as a hobby. I, like many other developers here, both young and old, started with my first computer (at the time, a TRS-80 Color Computer 2) to develop code. I remember reading books and magazines on coding, and, unlike today's younger set, typing in code (usually BASIC) from magazines, character by agonizing character. I learned to code in this way. I traded code with friends, and learned to convert between BASICs - from C=64 or Apple IIe BASIC to my CoCo's BASIC. I even played around with some funky graphics code found in a book on FORTRAN, which I converted to BASIC.
These are the skills I learned, from a diet of "open source", of a kind. No, it wasn't licensed in this manner, but it what got me started, and I am sure many others here got started in a similar manner.
Today, it is difficult to find code in this manner - to learn to code in this manner, simply because of the lack of magazines and the amount of code available on the internet. But the availability still teaches, and this is a good thing for budding coders.
But this isn't a good thing - ultimately - for the corporate interests. If you can code it yourself (using free tools along with source code) - or if you can find somebody who has already coded it, and is giving it away - why should you need to buy it? This is question that keeps proprietary software manufacturers up late at night...
I guarantee you, if they can find a way, they will do everything they can to make personal software development a thing of the past - whether that means licensing and regulation or what, this is what they want. It isn't just Microsoft - though they are one of the bigger players - it is any company that manufactures software - personal development is an affront to their business model, and must be stopped or severely limited. If they succeed - it will be a great loss for future generations of coders...
There was something special about typing in that first "Hello World"-like program on my TRS-80 - the mistakes I made, the corrections I had to do to get it to run - and then, it ran, and did something that I told it to do! A whole new world of excitement and wonder opened up to me, and 20+ years later I still remain fascinated...
So - I push for open source as part of my effort to fight the hidden "war" that proprietary software manufacturers are waging - I want my future sons and daughters (if they are inclined) to be able to sit at whatever is a personal computer, and still be able to fire up an editor or IDE and type in that first "Hello World"-like program, and see their eyes light up as they realize that they invoked "magic", and made the machine dance. By pushing for more use of open source software, I show my support for the model, and my efforts will hopefully help in some small part to stave off and possibly reverse the disturbing trends I see to lock down personal computers and turn them into meaningless "terminals" in a pay-to-play only world...
What you could do is limit the travel of your accelerator cable/linkage. Note, by the way, the such a modification could be dangerous, and/or possibly illegal - dangerous in that if you don't do it right (or if you do it right and it fails) - you could get in the situation of a "stuck" accelerator, which is a scary thing to have happen, if you have ever experienced it (has happenned to me before - not fun at all, especially if you are approaching a stoplight!).
But, basically, you want to find the length of the cable where you are at 55 mph (or whatever the speedlimit is you want to limit your car to) - don't ask me how you would do this, it probably isn't easy unless you have access to those "roller thingies" (can't remember what they are called right now) - that you "drive" on while the car is stationary (used for calculating many things, but most often used in emissions checking). Even so, this procedure would be dangerous at best...
Anyhow, once you know that, then you know how far you need to restrict your air intake valve (or carburetor intake valve, if your car is older) - how far the cable/linkage can rotate it until it hits your "stop" - then, install the stop. It could be a simple clamp or something on the cable, or it could be a screw stop or something to block the rotation of the pulley the cable or linkage is attached to.
You could try putting in an air-restrictor plate or such as well in the intake (say, covering up half your filter) - but things might get really wonky with that - you would run rich once the accelerator opened up the intake valve to attempt to let in more air (and the computer instructed the injectors to let in more fuel), but more air didn't come through - which could lead to all sorts of emmision related issues...
The name of the original system was "Virtuality", at the time the company was named "W Industries, Ltd" and based in the UK. The original system used an Amiga 3000 with custom video graphics cards (one for each eye) and IIRC, a SCSI CD-ROM drive. The HMD used small (1 inch or so diagonal) color CRTs, which were optically folded into the eyes (periscope style). The tracking was done via a Polhemus mag tracking system.
These early machines were the Virtuality 1000 (sit down and stand up models available, depending on application). W Industries went through some reorganization, and became Virtuality, Inc or something like that - and released the sleeker Virtuality 2000 series system - which used custom video and sound systems being driven by a 486-based motherboard. The resolution was greater (640x480x256 colors - up from the 1000's 320x240 or so), the speed was better, and the equipment (the HMD mainly) was lighter. No more wrenching your neck as bad if you looked around quickly. The HMD used high-resolution LCDs and was lighter and smaller (compared the 1000's HMD). The tracking system stayed mostly the same - a Polhemus IsoTrak (or SpaceTrak?) system.
Virtuality, Inc then went through some more organization - eventually being sold to (IIRC) a Danish company (the software or something), and the hardware patents and manufacturing to a Missouri (USA) based outfit called Arcadian Virtual Reality. They then struck a deal or something with the Danish arm, and supposedly are working hand-in-hand, continuing the development of the system. There is now a 3000 series system - but it seems to be a souped up 2000 series system (resolution didn't increade on the HMD - though there are plenty of higher-resolution small LCD displays out there). Not sure where this whole thing is going to lead.
The owner of Arcadian VR is a pretty nice guy - it sounds like a pretty small outfit - he was kind enough to give me the pinout for the HMD connector after I bought a used Virtuality 2000 HMD off of an individual on Ebay - the connector is a strange connector (looks almost like a funky molex connector in a custom housing). He offered to send me more of the manual from the 2000, but I never heard back from him again - still, his offer and help was much more than I ever expected, and he let me in on a bit of the history of the whole system and company.
Hope this answers your question. You are right, though - not much has changed or advanced at all in the whole 3D and Virtual Reality realm - I even got a laugh out of that recent Raytheon hand tracking system - they are showing off what is more or less a standard inbound-looking camera 6DOF position tracking system (pretty standard for body position tracking and digitization for the game industry) and calling it "new" - I am sure there are improvements, but I would hardly call the idea "new" - but to a lot of people, I bet it would look like new, unless you followed this stuff for as long as what you and I seem to have done...
Today, most (all?) distributions support loadable kernel modules. If there is anything you have to compile, it would be the module itself, not the kernel. Most of the modules, though, are already pre-compiled - just pick and choose what you want, set up any flags or options (if needed), and go. You may have to frob a file or two in /etc if your installer is lame, but most do that for you today, too.
About the only time I can think where you have to recompile the kernel anymore is if you want to eliminate a bunch of options from shipped "stock" compiled kernels, so that things that aren't needed by your machine aren't included (ie, you like to run very lean and mean) - or if you have a *very* esoteric piece of old or interesting hardware that you want to be made a part of the kernel and none of the stock kernels handle it, or offer a kernel driver. That, or you want the module in the kernel for some other reason (performance or something, maybe - where a loaded module won't work for you).
Never seen an ADDS ViewPoint (ADDS VP) terminal, have you?
IIRC, it is called "dwell" - and isn't something you are likely to have to change (or be able to change) unless your car is a pre-1980's distributor/points design.
You can even buy yourself counterpart of the "car with a hood welded shut" (Macintosh).
Want to really know what is scary? There is a fairly recent model Audi out there which has no hood - there is only a little access door on the side to check/change a few fluids (oil, coolant, and wiper fluid, I think). If you need to get anything more serious done to the car, you need to take it in to the dealer (!), where they have to basically remove the entire front body work of the car to get to the engine (!!). I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out that the screws are "special" and require a "special" tool just to remove them (I bet at some point they will be the first to use those new electronic/mechanical fasteners that I saw on here not too long back). I also wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't safety interlock switches that trigger the computer to not allow the car to start until they are reset by a special scan-tool - so even if you could get the front off yourself, fix the car, then put it back together, you would still need to take it to the dealer to get it to start up.
It is bastard companies like these that are making it difficult for those of us who like to work on vehicles, and it seems like it is only going to get worse as time goes by. One may say that an Audi is a "special case", since it is considered a "luxury" vehicle, and the owners aren't likely to work on their car any more than they would clean their own house. This "innovation" though will eventually trickle down into mainstream consumer vehicles.
The car with its "hood welded shut" is coming, and consumers are going to take it up the --- for it, too - I guarantee it...
What I mean by this, is that you can buy the rocket (D thru F engine model), launch kit (launch pad, controller, engines, igniters, batteries), and wireless video camera - and do something that while it has been done before by others, is still a cool thing to do for yourself.
First - the camera: For about $30.00 (approx. $10-20.00 for the camera, and $10-15.00 shipping, depending on seller), you can buy off of ebay drop-shipped from hong-kong a miniature 900MHz-1.2GHz wireless "sugar-cube" camera and receiver combo, which runs off of 9 volt batteries. The camera is designed to transmit a few hundred feet thru walls in a security setup - but outdoors up in a rocket you can expect around 1000 ft or so. This is the cheapest way of getting these cameras - don't bother with an american dealer, they will charge you $80.00 minimum, plus s/h - not a good deal at all.
The rest of your money will go into the rocket and launch needs - a larger scale Estes rocket will be perfect - you might even be able to get away with one of the egg lofters if you want (you might want to try a different/lighter battery tech for the 9V camera, though). Anyhow - you won't spend anywhere near $70.00 on everything - the rocket kit will be about $20-30.00, everything else will fill (or not) the rest of the cash.
Then - spend your time to build the thing. Remember to pad/protect the camera, and mount it securely (but make it airodynamic, too!). Mount the battery securely as well, so it won't rattle around and change your C/G mid-flight. You are going to want a rocket made for payload lifting or similar - something designed for the extra weight (unless you want to experiment!).
Take it to a field, set it up, check your camera feed (heh - maybe some extra cash could be thrown to a 12VDC video recorder - you want to record your first flight, right?), install the engine and igniter, begin your countdown - and get ready to enter an interesting aerial photography hobby!
Totally - I can see the secrecy needed for their projects, new and old - but I am not asking for a source code (or even schematic) dump here - just some pictures of their old machine in its historical (apartment) setting. Likely, their new machine(s) incorporates ideas/algorithms/learning from their old - and someone is likely to make some money off of it, so the need to protect this sensitive information. But a picture of the machine isn't going to tell anyone anything that can't be gleaned from the text of the New Yorker article, but they would help to put things in historical perspective for future generations. Besides all which, if there were really great secrets to protect, why would they show everything to the reporter/interviewer in the first place? They seem to be very open and generous individuals, and I agree that they would likely be the kind of people to invite you in, and discuss their work and yours - likely for hours upon hours on end, with tangents and everything (I would be just the sort of person to be "sucked in" to something like that - to the chagrin of my wife, unfortunately - but she understands, all the same). But they seem to have no interest in preserving their role in history in any concrete way. They are (seemingly) haphazard with their research and documentation - too the very point of dangerous fire hazard at best (they seem to have a "pack-rat" mentality to an extreme, at least when it comes to their research and notes - but they lack the proper skills to organise the same information). I can only hope that when it comes time, and they pass on, that their work is somehow preserved, and isn't seen by their heirs as a jumble of disorganized mess, best left to the garbage man to dispose of...
However, with that said, I know individuals who do go to those same extremes with common, everyday simple problems, exactly as I described. A simple problem, and a complex solution is what, in their minds, is needed. They will then proceed to argue with you, pontificate on end the why's and how's, produce immense diagrams, force vector calculations, etc - needlessly spending hours upon hours on end on a problem. In many cases, these same individuals will come up with a technically correct solution, then say "Eh, its done!" - and never attempt to try it out to see if it would work. In their mind, it works, that's it! But without trying, how do they know? In the real world, such a solution may fail.
Furthermore, for most problems, it is a solution much greater and grander than what is actually needed. For the hypothetical nut/bolt problem - the solution is simple, tried and true, in use for many, many years, with little change. I agree, that for some problems (like say, removing a very rusty stud on an engine block that is 30 years old), you might want to give some consideration to the possibility that if you torque too hard, the stud will break off. But the sane person says "Well, that is a possibility, and if that happens, then I just need to drill it out and re-tap it - thems the breaks!", and just go for it. Otherwise, you will sit there all day and accomplish nothing.
Which is what many of these individuals (the Brothers are an exception it seems) seem to do...
Instead of using cookies, bury an argument in the links. If you set up the site to be completely dynamic, including all the links, one of the arguments passed in can be an MD5 "hash" based off the login and password entered by the user, with a time limit (depending on the site, anywhere from a day to a few hours) - add the time limit into the hash, and when the limit passes, the hash is no longer valid. As long as each and every page on your site first calls a security check routine (which they all should), it can first check that the hash is there, that the user is registered as "logged in" (via a flag on the DB) - that the hash matches the login/password/time/etc, and that the originating IP address matches (could be made part of the hash, too). This link hash system isn't perfect, but it doesn't require cookies and it can't be "guessed" at. One of its larger drawbacks is the possibility of two people using the same login from different machines via a NAT'ed link (so it looks like the same IP for both)...
I have watched the movie PI - and I know that in part it was based on these two. I think about the computer as depicted in that movie. I think about other people I have known and about myself. I have known people who have had "vast collections" of parts and computers, books and papers - scattered and ordered, on shelves, on the floor. I myself to an extent am that way (but I try to confine it to my workshop and my office - bits creep out now and then and I have to shoo them back). Some of those I have known, though - come closer to the Chudnovsky brothers than I do. Though they have, supposedly (given the lack of pictures), realized tools and such - I know of people who theorize tools, come up with gradiose plans, all the way up to almost the point of execution (bits of paper, writing, etc) - then do nothing with it, claiming the problem solved and moving on to the next. Such minds stagger me, because it indicates a certain level of laziness - but more so, because all the theory in the world will never prove whether the theory is realizable as fact. Many such theories that sounded like they would work fine actually broke down as they were realized in the real world - but later became workable as the real-world constructs were fiddled with, or as the real world advanced to allow for them. But how would one ever know without trying? It is frustrating to see this - to see the unrealized potential - to see the possibility of unrealized possible profit to be had from these ideas...
True, that some of this is the need for thinkers and doers - after all, even Tesla's ideas needed Westinghouse to profit from them (and this is frustrating further still - why couldn't Tesla or the multitude of others then and now cash in on their hard work themselves - why must they all die virtually broke and alone?). It doesn't have to be this way - but something about how these individuals (and group minds?) work seem to preclude this as the "way it must be"...or something.
Another note - the Cloisters wanted an ultra-high resolution image of the tapestry. I agree that for preservation reasons, it has to be exact. So I don't fault the Brothers for finding the small faults which would cause them much pain to reassemble the mosaic, and have to figure out a way around this - but this is an example of something else I have noticed in this class of brilliance - making mountains out of molehills. It seems that for any given task (no matter how simple it could be), these people insist on finding the most complex solutions possible to solve them. In the case of this tapestry - maybe that is the best thing (for future generations?). But even in everyday situations, it seems that simple solutions won't work for them - the solutions must be extremely complex, or it won't work. They also get terribly upset when you prove or show to them that a simple solution works equally as well and gets the job done faster (an example: a tight nut on a bolt needs to be loosened - these individuals will tend to go about needing complex tools or methods, theorizing forever on whiteboards on this or that angles and torque and whatnot, hours later with nothing accomplished - damnit all, just squirt a bit of wd-40 on it, stick a damn socket and wrench on the thing, add a pipe extension, and give it a bit of leverage and bust the bastard free).
I will give the brothers this: they at least will build their own tools and realize things - though I will always find it madenning that the only "output" we ever seem to hear about these people, despite their genious, seems to only come from the pages of the New Yorker magazine. It seems like they are almost fiction...
Why is it that despite the Chudnovsky Brothers claims, which no one doubts, there doesn't seem to be any pictures of their apartment supercomputer? Does it still exist? Is it still running? Is it still computing PI? One would think that a machine that allowed them to compute so many digits of PI would be "immortalized" with at least one image, right? Can anyone point me to pictures?
One day, I hear a rattle - uh, oh - fan going - I say to myself. I finally get some time and determine that it was the video card fan, so I bring the system to a halt, shut it down, remove the card, replace the fan, and reinstall the card - and at that point, the gods of the computer realm decided to take a big dump on me...
It rebooted fine, I logged in - but for some reason, every time I went to use Mozilla (and ONLY Mozilla!), the system would freeze up hard on me (couldn't even telnet in) - I had to cold reboot, and pray that fsck worked on my ext2 filesystem. Even when it did, due to it fixing various broken things, I ended up losing something somewhat important to me (my bookmark file, which was about 3 meg in size at that point - a ton of bookmarks, to be sure). Fortunately, that was all I lost - I quickly wised up and backed up the rest of my important stuff to my networked fileserver...
After a lot of putzing around, I narrowed it down to the motherboard (or maybe the hard drive controller) going bad. If I used another motherboard, everything worked OK. Unfortunately, that motherboard was the only one I had that would run a P3-450 - all my other boards only took P2's. I ended up biting the bullet and purchasing a new motherboard, CPU and RAM which I should have done a long time ago. I am still ticked at myself for losing my bookmark file, but it could have been worse, I suppose.
I ended up switching to Mandrake 10.1 from Debian (couldn't get proper drivers, etc for the new motherboard to work properly under Debian, and since I use KDE a lot, I liked the new version of KDE in Mandrake - but if/when they bring Debian back up to a new version of stable - I might just switch back - I just love apt-get and dselect, and the tons of packages and easy config)...
I know of a person, a neighbor kid in school who lived a few houses down - his mother had MS - real MS. It was a terrible thing to watch progress. I also know of another individual, who was diagnosed with it. I told him what I am going to tell you - the description fit him, he tried it, went back to the doctor, and they were baffled when his symptoms of MS had disappeared. Now - it could be a case of spontaneous remission, but he fit the profile, so he tried it, and it...worked? Who knows - but he is now better, which is what matters, right?
Enough - here is the issue: How much diet soda (or any other foods containing NutraSweet) does your girlfriend consume? If it is a lot, read on. If none or very little - I am sorry.
Basically, what it comes down to is wood alchohol poisoning (ultimately, poisoning by formaldahyde). How is this possible? Well, the process by which NutraSweet is made involves the use of wood alchohol as a solvent (look up the NutraSweet patent - the process is right there), which is then distilled off. However, the theory is that some of the molecules of the wood grain alchohol remains in the resulting NutraSweet. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem - until the NutraSweet is heated.
Whether by cooking (as in cakes or cookies containing it), or by the sun or a hot warehouse (pallets full of soda sitting behind the store, or in unrefrigerated trucks) - the molecules are driven out and then consumed. I think there is even postulation that body temperature alone might be enough to drive off the molecules...
The body then does the rest - converting the wood grain alchohol molecules into formaldahyde molecules, which slowly poisons the body, and interestingly enough causes symptoms which appear very similar (almost too similar) to MS...
As I said - I don't know how true this is, but I have heard way too many anecdotal stories about people having MS who drank a lot of Diet this or that, then stopped eating that food and got better "spontaneously". Some have said this is all a conspiracy raving rant - an urban legend or something. I haven't seen any documentation one way or the other to support the idea, so do some research on it if you want (google on "NutraSweet Poisoning" for a start - then drill down from there on the various information). Also, talk to your doctor(s) - see if they have any insights or opinions on the matter.
I do know this - if I was diagnosed with MS, and I knew I had been consuming large amounts of NutraSweet or Aspartame containing products - I would stop doing so immediately, and start drinking a ton of water to help "flush" my system. It is a small change to make that may help in the long run...
Finally - if this isn't the case for you and your girlfriend, I am sorry - but I wanted to make sure that you (and others) were aware of this theory/idea - in case it could help...
Why, you may ask? Because the amount going back in to pay the advance is usually just enough or a bit more than the amount of interest earned. It is like all the stupid people who have credit cards and pay the monthly minimum - the principal of the loan NEVER gets paid down, or very little gets paid down. Add in all the other fees that is taken from the earnings of the artist, which weren't included in the contract (unless the artist was very smart, or the label dumb, or some combination thereof), and the amount going to pay the advance might be even *less* than the interest being tacked on. Then, compounding sets in, and maybe a second advance is tacked on because a new hit is released or something (think of it as a second mortgage without the refinancement) - and the artist finds himself in as much debt (well, respectively - the amounts are probably higher, the the percentages are probably close to the same between income and debt) as the typically American consumer with too much consumer credit debt.
Ever wonder why you don't see too many "oldsters" being signed up to the labels? Sure, it has to do with image and relevance as much as anything - but I bet a ton also has to do with an adult knowing better (unless they too are a typical consumer with debt) and negotiating the contract so they don't get screwed with advances. A younger "kid" is easier to control in this way, because all they see are the bling and the idea of "free cash" in the form of advances, that aren't really free. Teens and young adults simply don't grasp the ideas of credit, loans, APRs, and compounded interest.
Hell, most American adults can't even grasp these simple concepts...
So - first I look up some information on what a SteadiCam is, how it works, what it consists of - then I am thinking, "ok, maybe they haven't miniturized it too much - likely something for a handheld camcorder, but still cool" - thinking maybe they took a Luxo-like lamp or similar thing, added beefier springs, mounted it to some hard vest system (maybe a football player's vest or something)...
When Make first came out, I looked at the reviews, I read what the first issue was supposed to contain, I looked at the layout - and I thought "Blah - cheap crap off a hundred web-sites out there, I already have subscriptions to Nuts and Volts as well as Servo Magazine - do I need this?", and I passed on it. I really didn't think that it could be a cool magazine, in comparison to Nuts and Volts which I have subscribed to since 1991...
Here is this article on a SteadiCam - and I was this close to subscribing, thinking maybe I was wrong. I guess now I am glad I took a moment to read the Ars Technica review and see what a "Make SteadiCam" was...
A camera on a pole with weights! While I can't fault it in theory (it does seem to do the job well based on AT's quicktime shots) - it just isn't a real SteadiCam or even close to it! Where is the iso-elastic articulated arm system? This could have been done so much better, so much cooler (though probably a little pricier - say $50-100.00 instead of $14.00)! Furthermore this doesn't help me with my situation, which needs small size (I have ideas here, though). It isn't a bad simple project, and to be fair, that is what it was presented as in the magazine...
But am I going to fork over money for something like this? NO WAY! I get way more out of Nuts and Volts as well as Servo Magazine - anything else can be done with some thought and googling. Hopefully Make will become better and more challenging, with more expansive articles with real meat...
No idea what the original battery was like - I had to build my own battery from old cellphone ni-cads, and had to mod the case a bit to get it all to fit. I also managed to get the docking station (where you could add EISA cards and such). But the real treat was the keyboard...
It was detatchable! You could detatch the keyboard and it had a cord so you could position it how you wanted. In reality, it used a PS/2-style mini-connector (not sure how compatible it really was with PS/2 stuff), so the keyboard was like a mini-keyboard of sorts.
It was a great computer, and I played around with it and such a lot - even managed to use a form of Linux on it (my first Linux experience - it was Monkey Linux which ran on top of the DOS filesystem!)...
I am not Irish, I am an American - but I find the Irish language to be a beautiful sounding one. I am certain there are still a few people left in Ireland who do use it on a fairly regular basis, but I would imagine that it is a dying language, which for some reason saddens me...