Re:Think Monsanto are bad? Check out Union Carbide
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Monsanto and PCBs
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· Score: 2
From what I have read, the Bhopal UC incident was an accident...which resulted from willful negligence on the part of UC.
Basically, when the accident occurred, regulations weren't being followed - mostly in the safety area. The people manning the plant were undertrained, or trained wrong, and there weren't enough people actually running the plant as was required. As far as safety measures: the big one was a main klaxon or siren that was turned off to avoid disturbing the citizens of the town should there have been a problem.
Thus, when the problem occurred, nobody in the town knew about it - until they woke up choking.
Read about it, and what happened (and failed to happen) - it is truely one of the more sickening examples of corporate greed.
It doesn't look like the artists will be paid (from the FAQ):
How is Napster going to stay legal? Will you filter out certain songs, like before?
All the music available through Napster will be legally licensed for sharing in the Napster community. When you make music available for sharing, our system will check to make sure it's licensed to Napster. We're busy getting licenses to music from copyright holders ranging from major to independent labels, so there'll be a lot of great music when we launch -- and we'll continue adding to that body of music.
(Emphasis mine)
So, once again, it looks like both the artists and the users are being screwed.
This solution Napster will be offering would be more palatable in my view if we knew the money was going DIRECTLY to the artists, rather than via the "label"...
Ok - let me give you a bit of "insight" on my own personal experience...
By "day", I am a coder (currently Java, but will hack on anything thrown at me - including - "shudder" - DB/C - a COBOL varient - "shudder"). But when I go home, especially on the weekends - things can get, well...interesting...
On the "low" end I have fun with simple mechanical stuff (case in point - the other night I spent a couple of hours tearing apart, in full - a Logitech Trackman Marble - to clean it. It was a friend's, who gave it to me because it was "broke". He lives in one of those icky, dirty, roach-infested "gee-I-wonder-why" "geek" houses. Needless to say, it now works). Up a little higher I do digital electronic design and interfacing, mainly for custom robotic, virtual reality, and "embedded" application. IE - I break out the soldering iron and multimeter, and become a "wire-head". A little further I start doing fab work - breaking out the bigger tools (ie, dremel, saws, drills, etc) - for a variety of projects in metal, plastic, and wood (typically, these bits of work are parts of similar projects in robotics and VR).
But recently (well, it started soon after I got my first and current vehicle) - I have started down a fun, sometimes exciting, sometimes scary, and always dirty, dirty, dirty - path.
I have, with the help of my brother-in-law (whom I have mentioned in my past comments - he's the guy who drives a 10 wheel dump truck, and thinks nothing of using ether to "air up" a backhoe tire) been learning how to repair my vehicle - as I have learned the basics, I have become more comfortable working around and on it, and other large machines. I have always loved machines, but it used to scare me to think about pulling one apart, changing parts, etc. As I have worked on my vehicle, I have become much more confident. I regularly change my oil (both engine, transmission, and differential - ohh, does gear oil STINK!), spark plugs, battery, etc. I have done both front and rear brakes, drum and disc, repacked bearings, changed shocks, etc. I recently helped my brother-in-law remove and replace his clutch on his pickup, as well as diagnose and fix a loose steering wheel (bad u-joint). I have even learned how to do a home-brew wheel alignment!
This man has showed me a lot - he is all the time tearing his dump truck apart (mainly because it is over 25 years old, and has more new parts than original - but you got to keep it running, because that is his job) - I have seen him take the entire side of his engine off, to replace a blower housing on his engine. I have seen him drop the differential and replace it. He is always changing tires on the thing, or repacking hydraulic rams, or doing something. I have seen this man covered, head-to-toe, in dirt and grease working from sundown to sunup - to keep his truck going and provide for his small family. He is my mentor in these things, and I couldn't ask for a better one.
Recently, he has been teaching me a new "trade": metalwork - mainly Arc Welding. In addition, he has showed me how to properly use an OxyAcetylene torch for cutting steel. In the future, once I have regular stick welding down, I hope to move to an Argon gas wire-feed his dad has in his shop. Grinding, cutting, welding - red to white hot steel, flowing down, dripping near your toes. Hot bits of steel flying past your head (encased safely in a welding mask, of course) - some hitting your arms, and bitting like fire ants - that is what I am learning about.
Where to next - well I have been pondering home-based smelting...
Now, you may ask - how will this help me? I am a coder by day, after all - what good can all this do me? One thing, it lets me take my mind off coding - relaxes it, allowing time off to mull over other things, and maybe solutions to a coding problem come to my head because of that. But you know what I look forward to?
Imagine me combining my knowledge of coding, electronic design and interfacing, fabrication, autowork, metalwork, welding, cutting, grinding, and smelting - what can I design? What can I do?
<Smiling, with visions of a jet powered, teleoperated walking robot dancing in my head...>
While I have to agree with you that there is nothing like seeing artifacts in context with their "natural" surroundings (that is, in their original place and formation), I have to disagree somewhat with a computer not being able to provide a sense of scale.
The only reason for this would be because we, the users (ok, most of us, but not all) have become used to what are essentially 3D walkthroughs presented on a 2D computer screen, but in such a way as the scale is wrong, the details wrong, as well as one other important factor:
There is no immersion...
Now, for a game, this isn't a big issue. I would even argue that the slight bit of immersion that some players get when the dim the lights down and focus on the game, that it doesn't matter if size, etc are skewed - because it is a game, and hence, fantasy. IE - the players don't care or notice.
But we have the technology TODAY to create a reasonable, to-scale rendering and display of any artifact desirable to be viewed - not only can we view it from the "human-standpoint", but from an ant's, to a giant's! We can view it, fully immersed, as if we were "there". It could be made richly detailed (not perfect, but damn good - even on a PC today).
At the high end, we have CAVEs - at the "lower-end", we have HMDs (though one could easily argue that these could be high end as well - some models, indeed). Both these technologies, coupled with 3D tracking technologies and appropriate 3D sound systems - can achieve a super-high degree of immersion - placing the user "on-site", with the graphics scaled to whatever scale needed.
With today's machines, there should be little lag to mar the performance, and LCDs and miniature CRTs are of sufficiently high-resolution to permit large FOVs in current HMDs.
I am constantly amazed by the ohhs and ahhs over various graphics in 3D games - the speed, the number of FPS, etc - but no one, absolutely no one (outside of the lucky researchers who have CAVEs at their disposal, of course) - seems to want to make the leap of using these systems, these engines, in full immersive environments! It seems ludicrous, at best - tons of gamers willing to let a world slide by them on a window looking in, rather than buying or building HMDs to step into the worlds they play in.
What is holding everyone back? Cost is NOT THE ISSUE ANYMORE...
Ok, AC - that was a little over the top, and NOT aimed at you - your point is completely valid, up to a certain limit (that of your viewpoint of everybody using what amounts to "desktop-VR" systems)...
Every year millions of people go out and buy each other gifts, because it is "the thing to do" for one day of the year.
How sad.
I will speak of America, because it is what I know, because I live here.
We go to malls, to stores - many of them identical to each other. Even malls in different states are identical to each other (I was truely saddened when I went to the "Mall of America" for the first time - and "Tada!" - it looked like all of the malls here in Phoenix - only bigger - BFD!). So, gifts are bought and exchanged - gifts that could have been bought nearly anywhere in America - so identical.
Sometimes, when the giver doesn't know what the givee wants or needs - a gift certificate is given: Red Lobster, Chilis, Black Angus, Dennys, McDonalds. And that is just the food! For others, it is B&N, Amazon, Home Depot, Sears, Frys Electronics, CompUSA, etc. And for the truely challenged: cash.
Whatever happened to the love? Did it get bought and sold too? I have a sneaking suspicion it did...
I made a comment on an earlier/. posting about what I got for Christmas this year. All of it was well received, don't get me wrong. Of it all, the clothes were really what I needed most. The other stuff I got, I had asked for. One of the items seemed to be a thoughtful thing (the key fob thing) - which is something I like. And the stuff I bought myself? Well, was it really for Christmas...?
And the things I gave in return? Some of them had thought - but many were things asked for. What does that say? It saddens me...
Next year I want to try something harder, and I hope others do the same for me. I want to give a gift that when looked upon, it reminds the person of the thought and love that went into it, in either selecting it, or making it. Indeed, I may make gifts next year...
I once got a gift from a friend, that to this day means a lot to me. My friend told me he made it in shop class for me (long time ago in high school) - it was a little wooden incense box/burner. It is something I cherish to this day (recently I thought I lost it - I wasn't sure if I had, but I thought I did - the thought was nearly unbearable - I found it not too long ago).
I recently gave a friend of mine a handmade gift for his birthday - an origami "puzzle" box, with various small gifts contained inside (thus, the gift was both the container and wrapping in one). I spent several days thinking of what to put in it, and on it, and several hours constructing it. I hope he appreciated it for what it is (I think he did - he showed it to everyone it seemed).
I want to do that next year - use my skills to create unique gifts...
Good idea, but I don't think you will be able to get everything down to the small size I am assuming you are planning on, and still have enough power to run everything (ie, the car, the computer, etc).
Honestly, if you wanted to do such a thing, I would look into using a 1/4 scale R/C car (read: big, noisy, and expensive), or possibly a go-cart (ie: network enabled Yerf-Dog). Either way, it won't be cheap, but you will gain the power needed to keep everything running for a while.
If you don't need to keep things running for a long time, or you don't need the range, then why do the 802.11?
Grab an FM or PCM radio control box, hook it up to the computer, and control the car. Use VHF/UHF for the camera feedback loop - if you want data feedback, you might try dropping a line of LEDs in the video frame (ie, 8 bits with a read out, digitize using a frame grabber at the remote PC), or look into dropping data into the VBI (potentially that would be more power consuming - ie, to find a VBI insertion module small enough that uses R/C car voltage levels). Or, use telemetry radio modules (Parallax sells them for the basic stamp series).
You would have all the telepresence experimentation room, but could keep the package small and relatively low cost...
3. VHS copies of Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Wild Palms.
4. A gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.
5. $25.00 cash.
6. This strange "key fob" thing that "transforms" from an eliptical shape into a small pair of pliers (with phillips and standard screwdrivers, too) - plus it was engraved w/ my initials...
My gifts to myself (hey, who says you can't or shouldn't?):
Probably should have - I probably didn't because many of the stories I have submitted in the past (with the exception of a few "Ask Slashdots") have been turned down (only to "of course" appear later).
Anyhow, it may have not stood out in my post because I got lazy and didn't set the links up properly - just bleched them on the page...
While I haven't gotten around to compiling it yet, I did download the source, and saw that there was code for the Linux version for sound and joystick support, among other things. I guess I answered that question myself...
It wasn't that important to me - plus, I already had the data files - why pay again? I suppose you could argue "to show the want for the Linux version" but had I (and everyone else, let's say) bought the Linux version - how would that have helped it being GPL'd (ignoring the fact that JC was inevitably going to do this anyhow)?
JC has shown a way to make money, and still open source your product after it has enjoyed a long success. I hope others follow in his footsteps.
Easy response - I am not a gamer, so yeah - I didn't notice it.
I like to play Q2 - but I am not a frag-fest maniac like some friends of mine. I enjoy most FPS games for the scenery, the engine - more than the game itself. Most of these games are simply "shoot anything that moves", for the most part.
I have always wanted to know what could be done with the engines themselves - and this engine was no exception...
Is that this is just _now_ getting posted, about Ronja, that is.
If you look through the comments of that "old/. story" you posted (sort the thing "Oldest First", the comment will be on the first page toward the bottom), you will see a comment in there I made in which I included the following link:
http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/r0nj4/
My comment's title was "Homebrew it!" - I noted that Ronja seems to be the best - instead of lasers, ultra-high brightness LED's are used - no great distances here, but aiming doesn't have to be as accurate, fog/rain/birds are less of a problem, the hardware interface is rather simple, and the LED's (and other parts) are cheap!
Makes me wonder what took this so long to be noticed...
I have been waiting for this for a very, very long time. I purchased Q2 for Windows many moons ago, and it is one of the games I miss under Linux. Guess it is time to compile it now.
BTW - does anybody know whether _everything_ works, like sound, joystick, mouse, etc - or is it just the graphics engine and game code (ie, playable with keyboard and pretty gfx, but no sound or joystick support)? Just curious how well this thing really runs...
Hmm - now I am wondering if I should try basing my future VR system on this code...
Note: I don't think I have put any spoilers in, so this will be pretty bland - but if I have, please forgive my inclusion - I have not meant to give anything away...
I can honestly say I was impressed with this film. From beginning to end, I sat entranced. Oh, sure - I noticed parts left out, parts put in that were not in the original, as well as other changes made - but most were due to limitations of the cinema, and it was apparent they were not done on a whim. A lot of times, had the parts been left in, the movie would have been 5 or 6 hours long, and not the three it already was.
The movie starts out carefree - mostly with a sense of innocence. It is apparent that Gandalf is trying not to think of the real reason why he is in the Shire, and instead think about the party. However, it quickly becomes clear that things are not alright in Middle Earth, that there is evil afoot.
So, Sam and Frodo, with urging from Gandalf, begin their adventure (I should say, a little reluctantly)...
All of the characters are presented well: Gandalf is at times wise and easy going, at other times, very stern - and still others, such a force to be reckoned with it makes you move away from the screen!
Frodo is an individual forced to grow up quickly - to leave his roots in the Shire, where things were safe, and bear his burden until the end. Sam is ever there, always stalwart and ready to help regardless of the problem. Merry and Pippin are not really fleshed out well, though - they seem put in (for this movie) as "comic relief" - but when it comes, it is certainly welcome.
Bilbo is only seen for a few scenes (much like the book), but one scene showed a side of him, because of the ring's influence, that both frightened me for Frodo, and made me pity Bilbo.
I want to go on - but this thing would get ultra long - I have to say that what I think makes a good movie is how well it "moves" me, how well it causes my emotions to run. I have to say, this movie brought them all out. I felt at times joyous and peaceful, at other times fearful, and sometimes angry. There were times of mirth interspersed as well. Sadness was there, too. Excitement and danger seemed ever present.
Cinematically, the film was excellent - the Shire was the Shire. Bree, though, seemed both small and large to me, whereas it seemed much smaller to me in the book. Isengard was amazing, both before (a beautiful land), and after - sadly. The passage through Moria was a visual treat as well - much larger than what I felt the book was like, which served it well. The sweeping vistas of many of the scenes make me wish it had been playing at one of the IMAXs here locally - maybe one day they will play it on one...
Oh, and finally - the one creature you really pity is Gollum. Portrayed as one foul and odious creature, there still seems to be something about him that makes you wish you could make it all better, or something...
I have been to San Xavier outside of Tuscon, and your pics brought back memories - they are excellent. Now I need to try some myself (not that I didn't know about the technique, but I have never used it before)...
If it is done like most books today, it is simply glued. If color isn't a necessary component of the printing, you could "break" the spine, carefully remove the leaves (I think that is the term) or pages (if it is real cheap), from the book, photocopy them, and ring-bind or spiral bind it yourself.
If it is well bound (ie, with sewing, cloth, hardback, etc), then cut the pages out and photocopy them, then ring-bind it.
Now, I am not one for destroying books in this manner (or any manner - I love books), especially such an expensive one - but if you really need ring-bound books...
Ok, you know about this system, and you know what goes into building a cave, right?:
1. Several boxen 2. This software 3. Several projectors 4. A tracking system 5. 3D shutter glasses
All of which can be expensive. If you aren't thinking. If you aren't hacking.
Ok, you have the boxes and the software - that part is easy, and relatively cheap. But hey, six boxes can be expensive, especially when you are dropping good video cards into each. So what to do?
Use three boxes instead. Each box should have a dual head card. Then build a three wall cave instead. Such a configuration can be done either as a front view and two sides, or "staring at a corner", that is, using two adjacent sides and the ceiling for the projection surfaces. The other two sides can be rigged with black velvet curtains to block light.
Now, you need projectors. As we all know, such projectors aren't cheap - but they are coming down in price. If you can pick up six projectors (for stereo - two per wall) cheaply, more power to you. However, most of us won't be that lucky. So, what to do?
This site was spun off, crazy as it sounds, from the 100 Inch TV list on the same server. The group is focusing on building video projectors using cheap and easy to get LCD TVs, etc. Robin Holland also wrote a VR Book that detailed such a projector (see my VR site for more details on that book) back in 1996 (as well as the 100 inch TV projector, but that was done by others before him and all this long ago, called the Warper for the AcidWarp program).
Such projectors should prove not too difficult to build, and cheaply - but won't be high-res or anything - but they will be usable! I have a Fujix P-401 that is similar in design that is watchable, so I know what it would look like. If you build six of the projectors, you can use them with shutter glasses for stereo...
So, you need shutter glasses! Where to get 'em cheaply? Try Ebay! Look at this link for the systems currently on auction. There are a ton! But how to get 3D with your cheap LCD projectors (or even normal projectors)? Well, buy a pair of LCD 3D glasses for yourself, then a pair for every two projectors! Each pair will have two shutter LCD light valves - pull those out of the glasses, and place in front of each projector's output, and sync those with the glasses on the user. You may need to add fans to blow across these shutters to keep them from being overheated by the projector light source. Instant cheap 3D (but it may give you a headache after extended use)...!
So, now you need tracking. This is the really tough part - but it is possible to build this yourself. If you look at my site, you will notice that in Issue 2 of Cheap VR, I tell how to build a 3D magnetic tracker. Well, I have news for you: I have found someone who has done it, independently of my article (that is, he didn't know about my site or articles):
He has published a Circuit Cellar article on the tracker last August (2001) - detailing the construction and such. I was able to get a copy from him, and he says he plans on putting the article on his site for download. It looks like he is having traffic quota issues on part of the notes currently, but the PDF file will tell you a lot, and explains the math and theory behind it all (he covers a lot of things I didn't think of). Anyhow, notice in the pictures and movies that his hand is being moved inside a cube structure? That cube is the 3D tracker transmitter, similar in scope to what I wrote a long time ago. Anyhow - he has told me he is planning on building a 6 foot per side cube, to allow the tracker to track a user inside the cube. Check this: That cube structure can be your frame for the CAVE.
Build a cube of sufficient size (6 foot per side or larger), add the coils, then add the projection screens (Want a cheap back projection screen? Use white-plastic painter's dropdown "cloths", or use clear plastic "cloths", then frost them with glass frosting paint. Finally, stretch the plastic on the frames). Put the edges right against each other, so that the "seams" between the screens are minimized. Use the homebrew projectors to project against them (for the dual projection system, place the projectors as close as possible together - there will be some keystoning, but hopefully not too much to cause major issues).
There you have - a quick and easy CAVE system. Now, mind you, this won't be a simple construction project - not at all. Main reason is size, because you will need a room larger than the "inside" room you are building for the CAVE. But I can see this being done in a spare bedroom, or maybe a garage, given enough ingenuity.
So, now that you have an idea - someone try it out (hell, I would if I had the room) - and email me and let me know how it works...
This is something I have never been able to comprehend about "today's" average user - they are seemingly unable to comprehend the meaning and effective use of a hierarchical tree-based organizational system.
Why this is, I don't know. It perhaps has something to do with how the "average" person is, compared to us "computer geeks".
Average people tend to deal easily with relationships, and this reflects in many individual's organizational skills. Things go with other things, and then are stored in a file cabinet, generally in alphabetical order. I have heard that there is a school of thought in filing that says you should never put a folder in a folder - a real world axiom that is blown out of the water by current directory structures.
Microsoft tried to demystify directories by using a folder analogy in Windows 95 and beyond, but broke the rules by allowing folders in folders.
Perhaps the "average" user would repond more to icons shaped like a file cabinet (named whatever they wanted), with the ability at the "root" level to create "infinite" drawers (and nothing else) named or organized however they like (alphabetical, by date, by number, etc), with each drawer allowing "infinite" folders (named and organized, but only within the limit established by the drawer - ie, if a drawer is named "a-m", it can have a folder named "accounting", but not one named "shipping"), and each folder can hold as many "documents" (of any type? or maybe limited by folder parameters?) as needed, organised and name however.
But in no case can folders hold folders, nor can drawers hold drawers, nor can cabinets hold cabinets, etc - perhaps there can be links from one folder (document type of "link"?) to another, to establish relationships between documents across folders and drawers...
This metaphor would extend the desktop analogy, and be more useful to the average individual - it could be termed a "Cabinet, Drawers, Folders and Documents" metaphor - more closely modeled on the "real world".
Perhaps certain cabinets can hold applications (and nothing else), which can be dragged to the desktop if they are used frequently. Perhaps there could also be application "groupings" available as well - to allow the use of multiple apps that are for one logical application (such as a paint program, a photo editor, a scanning program, and a word processor, for a DTP application - drage the "DTP Group" out, and all of these applications would be brought out).
I would be a fool to think that this metaphor hasn't been dreamed up before. I think it could be easily implemented on today's standard systems. Perhaps it might make an interesting desktop system for Linux - maybe even something that could cause a gain for wide acceptance? I don't know if it would be useful for developers or other more technical audiences - but who knows? I do think that if the underlying system were hidden from the user, such an extension of the desktop metaphor would be a boon to the average user.
You bring up a valid point: such a thing was said (and is continued to be said) about all of these scientific pursuits.
However, the very fact that society is still arguing about all of them, rather than coming up with sane and honest ways to work with the technology, proves my point.
Mutually Assured Destruction forms an apt acronym, if you ask me. IMO, mankind should be at the point today where war shouldn't be contemplated - we should be helping each other, of all races, religions, nationalities and creeds - to become better, to strive for something more, and to become independent of our planet.
We have the technology, today, to reach our outer planets, and with time, the stars - in reasonable amounts of time (ie, nuclear propulsion). But instead, NIMBYism is practiced, and the idea of a nuclear rocket being launched in space fills people with an irrational fear that fallout will land on them (which is a sad account on the level of our science education - the common man should know that the levels of radiation in space are far higher than what would be added by a nuclear rocket).
We have the ability to create/modify extremely hardy plants and animals, create new medicines, etc - with our knowledge of biological processes (which I agree, is far from complete, if it ever will be) - such plants, animals and medicines could help people worldwide, if given the chance. Instead, plants are engineered with killer genes to cause farmers to keep paying for the seed, and IP laws keep vaccines and other medicines out of the hands of countries who need them most. All because of mainly greed and power.
Now, we are on the edge of creating something so fundamental - atomic element electronics and logic - which will have the infinite flexibility of code, with the "hardiness" of true hardware. Such a device has never been seen before, only hinted at. Hinted at mainly in the way software viruses work (and don't work). Hinted at by software that works one minute, and dies the next. Hinted at in the way software has been both used for good and for evil.
I know it is only a tool - and any tool can be used for good or bad purposes. But this tool may prove to be the "ultimate" tool (probably only limited by available atomic resources and energy input - I can imagine a nanosystem capable of using the energy of the sun to slowly deconstruct the asteroid belt and assemble a rocky "planet", given a long period of time). It could be a tool that reshapes mankind, and the way society looks at everything.
Let me first start out by saying that I believe nanotech - ie, the real stuff: assemblers, etc - will come about some day - maybe not soon, but probably sooner than we think. I believe this because of simple reasoning - we (ie, the informed/. crowd) know that computers ARE software, and that software can act as a computer. This is a fact - software only needs a physical hardware form to produce results in a small amount of time - for software cares, rocks and buckets are sufficient. With this realization, it should come as no surprise that once you can create a computer based on nano-elements (that is, an atomic structure computer), then software will have come into "physical" form. At that point, quasi-"living" things can be built, via software.
We see this in nature - it is called DNA and RNA - in fact, I wouldn't doubt that our first nanotech computers (ie, ones that are "general purpose" - yes I know about the parallel processing DNA "computers" that have been made in the lab), will in fact resemble DNA and RNA - and in fact may be based off of such natural structures, once we unravel the DNA "code" and how it works to assemble and disassemble the helical structure to form, well, "life".
Once that is done - whole new realms open up - because software is then hardware - hardware which can be coded to replicate, mutate, infect - viral hardware, in essence. Think about that.
Such a technology could be the "ultimate" weapon. It could be both the destroyer and the life giver. I believe we are on the cusp of having such great technology - but we, as a society, are immature babies - most of us are litterally unable and unready to wield the enormous power at hand (almost akin to another story we all know about, eh?).
Such technology will ultimately destroy our current sociological and economical bases - all of them - in near a blink of an eye. At first, I am certain there will be bans on it, then companies will wield it, regardless of bans - because it would give them enormous power. They will try to keep a tight reign on it (mutatable hardware that is the embodiement of software - ie, IP? DMCA, etc - you see where that can head - is it alright to make a copy of that "nano-steak"?). However, just like life - it will escape.
Likely, it will be one of us, or more likely, out progeny - who "crack" this code, and hopefully, release it to the world. This of course will open up the script kiddie floodgates of nanotech. I might have this backward - and these misuses will cause the ban. But it will escape nonetheless.
However, we won't be ready for it - I have no idea how it will end or begin.
But, I think it will begin with nanotech logic gates, assembled as a "blob" style computer - maybe deep in a packaged well on a computer chip. Watch for it. That, I believe, will be the beginning of the end - that will lead to a revolutionary new beginning. Whether humans will be human or alive for that new beginning I can only say is unknowable to me...
They may get funding for this - only because Congress and the people as a whole are clueless when it comes to understanding what nanotech will ultimately bring. It is a pity that the same amount of funding (nay, much greater!) won't be made available to schools for math and science funding (as well as probably socialogical science funding, or whatnot)...
The best computer "history" books that I know of aren't history books at all - but rather books contemporary for the time, which examine computers as "state-of-the-art" machines, describing them and the advances as they were happenning for the period.
Finding such books can be a long and difficult task - almost all of them will be out of print. I suggest if you (or anyone else) take this route to build a "history", to check in the antique district where you live for used/rare/antique books - sometimes you will find the strangest things (like, I found one book that described how to build your own radio telescope - however it was tube based).
For something in print, the best computer history book I have come across is "Computer: A History of the Information Machine" by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray (ISBN 0-465-02989-2).
It starts out with basically Charles Babbage, moves on to Herman Hollerith, then into Remington Rand, NCR, and the birth of IBM (spawned from Hollerith's enterprise - which is a whole book unto itself), then into Lord Kelvin's Tide Predictor, the Harvard Mark I, the ABC, the MTI - then into ENIAC and EDVAC, EDSAC. Then it goes into business machines - UNIVAC, BINAC, IBM's early boxes, starting with the 701 - then onto the large iron - beginning with the 1401, moving into the System/360, then ending with IBM's decline with the PC market. Then, chapters on Project Whirlwind and SAGE, the SABRE system (airline reservation). Then, software, timesharing and simple computer languages (such as Fortran and BASIC), the rise of the minicomputers and Unix, finally ending with microcomputers, the internet, and more.
A very good read - not overly technical, not overly detailed - but a good "overall" history, with enough detail to see how it all came together, who the major (and minor) players were, etc. It isn't like other books which start out with calculators and end with the ENIAC - instead, it starts closer to our time, with the beginnings of a true computer, albeit a mechanical one (Babbage).
Actually, couple this book in a collection with "Herman Hollerith" by Geoffrey D. Austrian, "Hackers" by Steven Levy, and the recent American release of "The Difference Engine" by Doron Swade, and I daresay you will probably have as near as can be imagined "complete" history of computers (ok, there are a few other books I would add in - the book on the ENIAC, Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Soul of a New Machine, etc).
You know - I look at my bookshelf - seeing these tons of contemporary and historical computer books - I think to myself "Amazing - the sheer vastness of this industry - this hobby - seems almost overwhelming!" - makes me wonder why man still fights one another over petty things... sigh.
As has already been posted numerous times - this isn't much of a hack - a server out of the case sitting in a fake tree - YAWN...
So, here is a free project - do it this year (not much time left, but I bet somebody could do it), or next - or whenever...
Get a piece of plywood or cardboard, cut it out in the shape of a christmas tree. Paint it (green for the tree, brown trunk, maybe some ornaments, or not).
Arrange a buttload of LEDs - red, green, yellow (and maybe blue if you are rich) - on the tree, by drilling holes (or, if you cut out the tree from pegboard, it is pre-drilled!) - now, here is where you can go wild:
1. Arrange them in a dense grid - and hook them up to the server to play tetris, etc (you know the routine). Add a web-cam, plus MP3 xmas songs through the sound card. Or use a SBC running Linux - or something. 2. Arrange them randomly, and have strings pulsing and flashing to the music. Maybe do a double "tree" - with two pieces of pegboard at right angles, and careful wire arrangement (to make it look like decorations as well?), and have the tree spin on a turntable (power would have to be applied via batteries and and SBC, and a wireless NIC).
Don't get me wrong - currently I am learning Perl by coding a somewhat complex (at least for a "first" project) CGI bookmark management system. I have yet to stray into the OO syntax of Perl yet, sticking with a functional approach for now. I am having fun, and enjoy coding in it. With that said, though...
I understand the sentiment of some when they equate Perl with "line noise" - we have all seen the lovely "one-line" Perl scripts which seem to "be all that and a bag of chips" - scripts that seem to do the impossible, sometimes.
I am sure we have all seen instances of this same type of coding within larger Perl systems, as well. I know I have looked inside some modules I have download, some code I have picked up in places, and nearly gagged at some of the stuff I have seen...!
Sure, it worked great - but unless you are a master regex wizard (regex is something I am still trying to grasp the complexities of - whoever came up with the system should be beat - I mean, if you want to do something complex, that is what coding is for - not everything should be done on the command line!) you can't understand it. Regex, unfortunately, seems like a "must-to-know" to do certain things in Perl, it seems. I don't want to really come across as knocking regex too much - I attribute that more to my lack of understanding. I am sure one day I will come to "love it".
I think what upsets me the most is that many of these "wizards" assume that because they wrote the regex code for a certain function, that others can easily read it. However, it is apparent by the number of people who refer to Perl as "line noise" that others find those expressions hard to read!
I think it would be better if those expressions were broken out/down into seperate lines, with comments explaining what each section is doing (why is commenting so hard for most programmers to do? You want fun? Wade through the Descent I code - this from a pro game house - hahahaha! - non-commented C code at its finest - but I digress). If they must, because of performance reasons (I don't honestly know for sure), provide the single line version as well, and put the multi-line version in comments or something.
Nothing makes me loath Perl more than trying to figure out the bits (that should be "huge bits") of regex almost invariably scattered throughout...
Slashdot Mirror
From what I have read, the Bhopal UC incident was an accident...which resulted from willful negligence on the part of UC.
Basically, when the accident occurred, regulations weren't being followed - mostly in the safety area. The people manning the plant were undertrained, or trained wrong, and there weren't enough people actually running the plant as was required. As far as safety measures: the big one was a main klaxon or siren that was turned off to avoid disturbing the citizens of the town should there have been a problem.
Thus, when the problem occurred, nobody in the town knew about it - until they woke up choking.
Read about it, and what happened (and failed to happen) - it is truely one of the more sickening examples of corporate greed.
It doesn't look like the artists will be paid (from the FAQ):
How is Napster going to stay legal? Will you filter out certain songs, like before?
All the music available through Napster will be legally licensed for sharing in the Napster community. When you make music available for sharing, our system will check to make sure it's licensed to Napster. We're busy getting licenses to music from copyright holders ranging from major to independent labels, so there'll be a lot of great music when we launch -- and we'll continue adding to that body of music.
(Emphasis mine)
So, once again, it looks like both the artists and the users are being screwed.
This solution Napster will be offering would be more palatable in my view if we knew the money was going DIRECTLY to the artists, rather than via the "label"...
Ok - let me give you a bit of "insight" on my own personal experience...
By "day", I am a coder (currently Java, but will hack on anything thrown at me - including - "shudder" - DB/C - a COBOL varient - "shudder"). But when I go home, especially on the weekends - things can get, well...interesting...
On the "low" end I have fun with simple mechanical stuff (case in point - the other night I spent a couple of hours tearing apart, in full - a Logitech Trackman Marble - to clean it. It was a friend's, who gave it to me because it was "broke". He lives in one of those icky, dirty, roach-infested "gee-I-wonder-why" "geek" houses. Needless to say, it now works). Up a little higher I do digital electronic design and interfacing, mainly for custom robotic, virtual reality, and "embedded" application. IE - I break out the soldering iron and multimeter, and become a "wire-head". A little further I start doing fab work - breaking out the bigger tools (ie, dremel, saws, drills, etc) - for a variety of projects in metal, plastic, and wood (typically, these bits of work are parts of similar projects in robotics and VR).
But recently (well, it started soon after I got my first and current vehicle) - I have started down a fun, sometimes exciting, sometimes scary, and always dirty, dirty, dirty - path.
I have, with the help of my brother-in-law (whom I have mentioned in my past comments - he's the guy who drives a 10 wheel dump truck, and thinks nothing of using ether to "air up" a backhoe tire) been learning how to repair my vehicle - as I have learned the basics, I have become more comfortable working around and on it, and other large machines. I have always loved machines, but it used to scare me to think about pulling one apart, changing parts, etc. As I have worked on my vehicle, I have become much more confident. I regularly change my oil (both engine, transmission, and differential - ohh, does gear oil STINK!), spark plugs, battery, etc. I have done both front and rear brakes, drum and disc, repacked bearings, changed shocks, etc. I recently helped my brother-in-law remove and replace his clutch on his pickup, as well as diagnose and fix a loose steering wheel (bad u-joint). I have even learned how to do a home-brew wheel alignment!
This man has showed me a lot - he is all the time tearing his dump truck apart (mainly because it is over 25 years old, and has more new parts than original - but you got to keep it running, because that is his job) - I have seen him take the entire side of his engine off, to replace a blower housing on his engine. I have seen him drop the differential and replace it. He is always changing tires on the thing, or repacking hydraulic rams, or doing something. I have seen this man covered, head-to-toe, in dirt and grease working from sundown to sunup - to keep his truck going and provide for his small family. He is my mentor in these things, and I couldn't ask for a better one.
Recently, he has been teaching me a new "trade": metalwork - mainly Arc Welding. In addition, he has showed me how to properly use an OxyAcetylene torch for cutting steel. In the future, once I have regular stick welding down, I hope to move to an Argon gas wire-feed his dad has in his shop. Grinding, cutting, welding - red to white hot steel, flowing down, dripping near your toes. Hot bits of steel flying past your head (encased safely in a welding mask, of course) - some hitting your arms, and bitting like fire ants - that is what I am learning about.
Where to next - well I have been pondering home-based smelting...
Now, you may ask - how will this help me? I am a coder by day, after all - what good can all this do me? One thing, it lets me take my mind off coding - relaxes it, allowing time off to mull over other things, and maybe solutions to a coding problem come to my head because of that. But you know what I look forward to?
Imagine me combining my knowledge of coding, electronic design and interfacing, fabrication, autowork, metalwork, welding, cutting, grinding, and smelting - what can I design? What can I do?
<Smiling, with visions of a jet powered, teleoperated walking robot dancing in my head...>
While I have to agree with you that there is nothing like seeing artifacts in context with their "natural" surroundings (that is, in their original place and formation), I have to disagree somewhat with a computer not being able to provide a sense of scale.
The only reason for this would be because we, the users (ok, most of us, but not all) have become used to what are essentially 3D walkthroughs presented on a 2D computer screen, but in such a way as the scale is wrong, the details wrong, as well as one other important factor:
There is no immersion...
Now, for a game, this isn't a big issue. I would even argue that the slight bit of immersion that some players get when the dim the lights down and focus on the game, that it doesn't matter if size, etc are skewed - because it is a game, and hence, fantasy. IE - the players don't care or notice.
But we have the technology TODAY to create a reasonable, to-scale rendering and display of any artifact desirable to be viewed - not only can we view it from the "human-standpoint", but from an ant's, to a giant's! We can view it, fully immersed, as if we were "there". It could be made richly detailed (not perfect, but damn good - even on a PC today).
At the high end, we have CAVEs - at the "lower-end", we have HMDs (though one could easily argue that these could be high end as well - some models, indeed). Both these technologies, coupled with 3D tracking technologies and appropriate 3D sound systems - can achieve a super-high degree of immersion - placing the user "on-site", with the graphics scaled to whatever scale needed.
With today's machines, there should be little lag to mar the performance, and LCDs and miniature CRTs are of sufficiently high-resolution to permit large FOVs in current HMDs.
I am constantly amazed by the ohhs and ahhs over various graphics in 3D games - the speed, the number of FPS, etc - but no one, absolutely no one (outside of the lucky researchers who have CAVEs at their disposal, of course) - seems to want to make the leap of using these systems, these engines, in full immersive environments! It seems ludicrous, at best - tons of gamers willing to let a world slide by them on a window looking in, rather than buying or building HMDs to step into the worlds they play in.
What is holding everyone back? Cost is NOT THE ISSUE ANYMORE...
Ok, AC - that was a little over the top, and NOT aimed at you - your point is completely valid, up to a certain limit (that of your viewpoint of everybody using what amounts to "desktop-VR" systems)...
...???
Every year millions of people go out and buy each other gifts, because it is "the thing to do" for one day of the year.
/. posting about what I got for Christmas this year. All of it was well received, don't get me wrong. Of it all, the clothes were really what I needed most. The other stuff I got, I had asked for. One of the items seemed to be a thoughtful thing (the key fob thing) - which is something I like. And the stuff I bought myself? Well, was it really for Christmas...?
How sad.
I will speak of America, because it is what I know, because I live here.
We go to malls, to stores - many of them identical to each other. Even malls in different states are identical to each other (I was truely saddened when I went to the "Mall of America" for the first time - and "Tada!" - it looked like all of the malls here in Phoenix - only bigger - BFD!). So, gifts are bought and exchanged - gifts that could have been bought nearly anywhere in America - so identical.
Sometimes, when the giver doesn't know what the givee wants or needs - a gift certificate is given: Red Lobster, Chilis, Black Angus, Dennys, McDonalds. And that is just the food! For others, it is B&N, Amazon, Home Depot, Sears, Frys Electronics, CompUSA, etc. And for the truely challenged: cash.
Whatever happened to the love? Did it get bought and sold too? I have a sneaking suspicion it did...
I made a comment on an earlier
And the things I gave in return? Some of them had thought - but many were things asked for. What does that say? It saddens me...
Next year I want to try something harder, and I hope others do the same for me. I want to give a gift that when looked upon, it reminds the person of the thought and love that went into it, in either selecting it, or making it. Indeed, I may make gifts next year...
I once got a gift from a friend, that to this day means a lot to me. My friend told me he made it in shop class for me (long time ago in high school) - it was a little wooden incense box/burner. It is something I cherish to this day (recently I thought I lost it - I wasn't sure if I had, but I thought I did - the thought was nearly unbearable - I found it not too long ago).
I recently gave a friend of mine a handmade gift for his birthday - an origami "puzzle" box, with various small gifts contained inside (thus, the gift was both the container and wrapping in one). I spent several days thinking of what to put in it, and on it, and several hours constructing it. I hope he appreciated it for what it is (I think he did - he showed it to everyone it seemed).
I want to do that next year - use my skills to create unique gifts...
It won't be easy, but labors of love rarely are.
Good idea, but I don't think you will be able to get everything down to the small size I am assuming you are planning on, and still have enough power to run everything (ie, the car, the computer, etc).
Honestly, if you wanted to do such a thing, I would look into using a 1/4 scale R/C car (read: big, noisy, and expensive), or possibly a go-cart (ie: network enabled Yerf-Dog). Either way, it won't be cheap, but you will gain the power needed to keep everything running for a while.
If you don't need to keep things running for a long time, or you don't need the range, then why do the 802.11?
Grab an FM or PCM radio control box, hook it up to the computer, and control the car. Use VHF/UHF for the camera feedback loop - if you want data feedback, you might try dropping a line of LEDs in the video frame (ie, 8 bits with a read out, digitize using a frame grabber at the remote PC), or look into dropping data into the VBI (potentially that would be more power consuming - ie, to find a VBI insertion module small enough that uses R/C car voltage levels). Or, use telemetry radio modules (Parallax sells them for the basic stamp series).
You would have all the telepresence experimentation room, but could keep the package small and relatively low cost...
My list:
1. Several shirts and pants, and a sweater (needed the shirts n' pants for work - sweater is nice, too).
2. The TAB Build Your Own Robot Kit - coolness!
3. VHS copies of Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Wild Palms.
4. A gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.
5. $25.00 cash.
6. This strange "key fob" thing that "transforms" from an eliptical shape into a small pair of pliers (with phillips and standard screwdrivers, too) - plus it was engraved w/ my initials...
My gifts to myself (hey, who says you can't or shouldn't?):
1. A General Reality CyberEye CE-200M HMD, with a CyberTrack II 3DOF headtracker (ultra-coolness, and the most excellent deal off of eBay).
2. A Radio Shack ProbeScope oscilloscope.
3. An IBM Model M "clicky" keyboard (found one cheap in a local computer recycling store - couldn't resist).
Merry Christmas, all!
Probably should have - I probably didn't because many of the stories I have submitted in the past (with the exception of a few "Ask Slashdots") have been turned down (only to "of course" appear later).
Anyhow, it may have not stood out in my post because I got lazy and didn't set the links up properly - just bleched them on the page...
Oh, re: the joystick, sound, etc...
While I haven't gotten around to compiling it yet, I did download the source, and saw that there was code for the Linux version for sound and joystick support, among other things. I guess I answered that question myself...
It wasn't that important to me - plus, I already had the data files - why pay again? I suppose you could argue "to show the want for the Linux version" but had I (and everyone else, let's say) bought the Linux version - how would that have helped it being GPL'd (ignoring the fact that JC was inevitably going to do this anyhow)?
JC has shown a way to make money, and still open source your product after it has enjoyed a long success. I hope others follow in his footsteps.
Easy response - I am not a gamer, so yeah - I didn't notice it.
I like to play Q2 - but I am not a frag-fest maniac like some friends of mine. I enjoy most FPS games for the scenery, the engine - more than the game itself. Most of these games are simply "shoot anything that moves", for the most part.
I have always wanted to know what could be done with the engines themselves - and this engine was no exception...
Is that this is just _now_ getting posted, about Ronja, that is.
/. story" you posted (sort the thing "Oldest First", the comment will be on the first page toward the bottom), you will see a comment in there I made in which I included the following link:
If you look through the comments of that "old
http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/r0nj4/
My comment's title was "Homebrew it!" - I noted that Ronja seems to be the best - instead of lasers, ultra-high brightness LED's are used - no great distances here, but aiming doesn't have to be as accurate, fog/rain/birds are less of a problem, the hardware interface is rather simple, and the LED's (and other parts) are cheap!
Makes me wonder what took this so long to be noticed...
I have been waiting for this for a very, very long time. I purchased Q2 for Windows many moons ago, and it is one of the games I miss under Linux. Guess it is time to compile it now.
BTW - does anybody know whether _everything_ works, like sound, joystick, mouse, etc - or is it just the graphics engine and game code (ie, playable with keyboard and pretty gfx, but no sound or joystick support)? Just curious how well this thing really runs...
Hmm - now I am wondering if I should try basing my future VR system on this code...
Note: I don't think I have put any spoilers in, so this will be pretty bland - but if I have, please forgive my inclusion - I have not meant to give anything away...
I can honestly say I was impressed with this film. From beginning to end, I sat entranced. Oh, sure - I noticed parts left out, parts put in that were not in the original, as well as other changes made - but most were due to limitations of the cinema, and it was apparent they were not done on a whim. A lot of times, had the parts been left in, the movie would have been 5 or 6 hours long, and not the three it already was.
The movie starts out carefree - mostly with a sense of innocence. It is apparent that Gandalf is trying not to think of the real reason why he is in the Shire, and instead think about the party. However, it quickly becomes clear that things are not alright in Middle Earth, that there is evil afoot.
So, Sam and Frodo, with urging from Gandalf, begin their adventure (I should say, a little reluctantly)...
All of the characters are presented well: Gandalf is at times wise and easy going, at other times, very stern - and still others, such a force to be reckoned with it makes you move away from the screen!
Frodo is an individual forced to grow up quickly - to leave his roots in the Shire, where things were safe, and bear his burden until the end. Sam is ever there, always stalwart and ready to help regardless of the problem. Merry and Pippin are not really fleshed out well, though - they seem put in (for this movie) as "comic relief" - but when it comes, it is certainly welcome.
Bilbo is only seen for a few scenes (much like the book), but one scene showed a side of him, because of the ring's influence, that both frightened me for Frodo, and made me pity Bilbo.
I want to go on - but this thing would get ultra long - I have to say that what I think makes a good movie is how well it "moves" me, how well it causes my emotions to run. I have to say, this movie brought them all out. I felt at times joyous and peaceful, at other times fearful, and sometimes angry. There were times of mirth interspersed as well. Sadness was there, too. Excitement and danger seemed ever present.
Cinematically, the film was excellent - the Shire was the Shire. Bree, though, seemed both small and large to me, whereas it seemed much smaller to me in the book. Isengard was amazing, both before (a beautiful land), and after - sadly. The passage through Moria was a visual treat as well - much larger than what I felt the book was like, which served it well. The sweeping vistas of many of the scenes make me wish it had been playing at one of the IMAXs here locally - maybe one day they will play it on one...
Oh, and finally - the one creature you really pity is Gollum. Portrayed as one foul and odious creature, there still seems to be something about him that makes you wish you could make it all better, or something...
Just what we all need: a watch that can only be viewed with night vision goggles or by insects.
Actually, that isn't a bad idea! I would think the DOD would love to have watches like that for special-op troops, if they don't already...
I have been to San Xavier outside of Tuscon, and your pics brought back memories - they are excellent. Now I need to try some myself (not that I didn't know about the technique, but I have never used it before)...
If it is done like most books today, it is simply glued. If color isn't a necessary component of the printing, you could "break" the spine, carefully remove the leaves (I think that is the term) or pages (if it is real cheap), from the book, photocopy them, and ring-bind or spiral bind it yourself.
If it is well bound (ie, with sewing, cloth, hardback, etc), then cut the pages out and photocopy them, then ring-bind it.
Now, I am not one for destroying books in this manner (or any manner - I love books), especially such an expensive one - but if you really need ring-bound books...
Ok, you know about this system, and you know what goes into building a cave, right?:
1. Several boxen
2. This software
3. Several projectors
4. A tracking system
5. 3D shutter glasses
All of which can be expensive. If you aren't thinking. If you aren't hacking.
Ok, you have the boxes and the software - that part is easy, and relatively cheap. But hey, six boxes can be expensive, especially when you are dropping good video cards into each. So what to do?
Use three boxes instead. Each box should have a dual head card. Then build a three wall cave instead. Such a configuration can be done either as a front view and two sides, or "staring at a corner", that is, using two adjacent sides and the ceiling for the projection surfaces. The other two sides can be rigged with black velvet curtains to block light.
Now, you need projectors. As we all know, such projectors aren't cheap - but they are coming down in price. If you can pick up six projectors (for stereo - two per wall) cheaply, more power to you. However, most of us won't be that lucky. So, what to do?
Build your own projectors!
This site was spun off, crazy as it sounds, from the 100 Inch TV list on the same server. The group is focusing on building video projectors using cheap and easy to get LCD TVs, etc. Robin Holland also wrote a VR Book that detailed such a projector (see my VR site for more details on that book) back in 1996 (as well as the 100 inch TV projector, but that was done by others before him and all this long ago, called the Warper for the AcidWarp program).
Such projectors should prove not too difficult to build, and cheaply - but won't be high-res or anything - but they will be usable! I have a Fujix P-401 that is similar in design that is watchable, so I know what it would look like. If you build six of the projectors, you can use them with shutter glasses for stereo...
So, you need shutter glasses! Where to get 'em cheaply? Try Ebay! Look at this link for the systems currently on auction. There are a ton! But how to get 3D with your cheap LCD projectors (or even normal projectors)? Well, buy a pair of LCD 3D glasses for yourself, then a pair for every two projectors! Each pair will have two shutter LCD light valves - pull those out of the glasses, and place in front of each projector's output, and sync those with the glasses on the user. You may need to add fans to blow across these shutters to keep them from being overheated by the projector light source. Instant cheap 3D (but it may give you a headache after extended use)...!
So, now you need tracking. This is the really tough part - but it is possible to build this yourself. If you look at my site, you will notice that in Issue 2 of Cheap VR, I tell how to build a 3D magnetic tracker. Well, I have news for you: I have found someone who has done it, independently of my article (that is, he didn't know about my site or articles):
Juan's Homemade Magnetic Tracker
He has published a Circuit Cellar article on the tracker last August (2001) - detailing the construction and such. I was able to get a copy from him, and he says he plans on putting the article on his site for download. It looks like he is having traffic quota issues on part of the notes currently, but the PDF file will tell you a lot, and explains the math and theory behind it all (he covers a lot of things I didn't think of). Anyhow, notice in the pictures and movies that his hand is being moved inside a cube structure? That cube is the 3D tracker transmitter, similar in scope to what I wrote a long time ago. Anyhow - he has told me he is planning on building a 6 foot per side cube, to allow the tracker to track a user inside the cube. Check this: That cube structure can be your frame for the CAVE.
Build a cube of sufficient size (6 foot per side or larger), add the coils, then add the projection screens (Want a cheap back projection screen? Use white-plastic painter's dropdown "cloths", or use clear plastic "cloths", then frost them with glass frosting paint. Finally, stretch the plastic on the frames). Put the edges right against each other, so that the "seams" between the screens are minimized. Use the homebrew projectors to project against them (for the dual projection system, place the projectors as close as possible together - there will be some keystoning, but hopefully not too much to cause major issues).
There you have - a quick and easy CAVE system. Now, mind you, this won't be a simple construction project - not at all. Main reason is size, because you will need a room larger than the "inside" room you are building for the CAVE. But I can see this being done in a spare bedroom, or maybe a garage, given enough ingenuity.
So, now that you have an idea - someone try it out (hell, I would if I had the room) - and email me and let me know how it works...
This is something I have never been able to comprehend about "today's" average user - they are seemingly unable to comprehend the meaning and effective use of a hierarchical tree-based organizational system.
Why this is, I don't know. It perhaps has something to do with how the "average" person is, compared to us "computer geeks".
Average people tend to deal easily with relationships, and this reflects in many individual's organizational skills. Things go with other things, and then are stored in a file cabinet, generally in alphabetical order. I have heard that there is a school of thought in filing that says you should never put a folder in a folder - a real world axiom that is blown out of the water by current directory structures.
Microsoft tried to demystify directories by using a folder analogy in Windows 95 and beyond, but broke the rules by allowing folders in folders.
Perhaps the "average" user would repond more to icons shaped like a file cabinet (named whatever they wanted), with the ability at the "root" level to create "infinite" drawers (and nothing else) named or organized however they like (alphabetical, by date, by number, etc), with each drawer allowing "infinite" folders (named and organized, but only within the limit established by the drawer - ie, if a drawer is named "a-m", it can have a folder named "accounting", but not one named "shipping"), and each folder can hold as many "documents" (of any type? or maybe limited by folder parameters?) as needed, organised and name however.
But in no case can folders hold folders, nor can drawers hold drawers, nor can cabinets hold cabinets, etc - perhaps there can be links from one folder (document type of "link"?) to another, to establish relationships between documents across folders and drawers...
This metaphor would extend the desktop analogy, and be more useful to the average individual - it could be termed a "Cabinet, Drawers, Folders and Documents" metaphor - more closely modeled on the "real world".
Perhaps certain cabinets can hold applications (and nothing else), which can be dragged to the desktop if they are used frequently. Perhaps there could also be application "groupings" available as well - to allow the use of multiple apps that are for one logical application (such as a paint program, a photo editor, a scanning program, and a word processor, for a DTP application - drage the "DTP Group" out, and all of these applications would be brought out).
I would be a fool to think that this metaphor hasn't been dreamed up before. I think it could be easily implemented on today's standard systems. Perhaps it might make an interesting desktop system for Linux - maybe even something that could cause a gain for wide acceptance? I don't know if it would be useful for developers or other more technical audiences - but who knows? I do think that if the underlying system were hidden from the user, such an extension of the desktop metaphor would be a boon to the average user.
You bring up a valid point: such a thing was said (and is continued to be said) about all of these scientific pursuits.
However, the very fact that society is still arguing about all of them, rather than coming up with sane and honest ways to work with the technology, proves my point.
Mutually Assured Destruction forms an apt acronym, if you ask me. IMO, mankind should be at the point today where war shouldn't be contemplated - we should be helping each other, of all races, religions, nationalities and creeds - to become better, to strive for something more, and to become independent of our planet.
We have the technology, today, to reach our outer planets, and with time, the stars - in reasonable amounts of time (ie, nuclear propulsion). But instead, NIMBYism is practiced, and the idea of a nuclear rocket being launched in space fills people with an irrational fear that fallout will land on them (which is a sad account on the level of our science education - the common man should know that the levels of radiation in space are far higher than what would be added by a nuclear rocket).
We have the ability to create/modify extremely hardy plants and animals, create new medicines, etc - with our knowledge of biological processes (which I agree, is far from complete, if it ever will be) - such plants, animals and medicines could help people worldwide, if given the chance. Instead, plants are engineered with killer genes to cause farmers to keep paying for the seed, and IP laws keep vaccines and other medicines out of the hands of countries who need them most. All because of mainly greed and power.
Now, we are on the edge of creating something so fundamental - atomic element electronics and logic - which will have the infinite flexibility of code, with the "hardiness" of true hardware. Such a device has never been seen before, only hinted at. Hinted at mainly in the way software viruses work (and don't work). Hinted at by software that works one minute, and dies the next. Hinted at in the way software has been both used for good and for evil.
I know it is only a tool - and any tool can be used for good or bad purposes. But this tool may prove to be the "ultimate" tool (probably only limited by available atomic resources and energy input - I can imagine a nanosystem capable of using the energy of the sun to slowly deconstruct the asteroid belt and assemble a rocky "planet", given a long period of time). It could be a tool that reshapes mankind, and the way society looks at everything.
Let me first start out by saying that I believe nanotech - ie, the real stuff: assemblers, etc - will come about some day - maybe not soon, but probably sooner than we think. I believe this because of simple reasoning - we (ie, the informed /. crowd) know that computers ARE software, and that software can act as a computer. This is a fact - software only needs a physical hardware form to produce results in a small amount of time - for software cares, rocks and buckets are sufficient. With this realization, it should come as no surprise that once you can create a computer based on nano-elements (that is, an atomic structure computer), then software will have come into "physical" form. At that point, quasi-"living" things can be built, via software.
We see this in nature - it is called DNA and RNA - in fact, I wouldn't doubt that our first nanotech computers (ie, ones that are "general purpose" - yes I know about the parallel processing DNA "computers" that have been made in the lab), will in fact resemble DNA and RNA - and in fact may be based off of such natural structures, once we unravel the DNA "code" and how it works to assemble and disassemble the helical structure to form, well, "life".
Once that is done - whole new realms open up - because software is then hardware - hardware which can be coded to replicate, mutate, infect - viral hardware, in essence. Think about that.
Such a technology could be the "ultimate" weapon. It could be both the destroyer and the life giver. I believe we are on the cusp of having such great technology - but we, as a society, are immature babies - most of us are litterally unable and unready to wield the enormous power at hand (almost akin to another story we all know about, eh?).
Such technology will ultimately destroy our current sociological and economical bases - all of them - in near a blink of an eye. At first, I am certain there will be bans on it, then companies will wield it, regardless of bans - because it would give them enormous power. They will try to keep a tight reign on it (mutatable hardware that is the embodiement of software - ie, IP? DMCA, etc - you see where that can head - is it alright to make a copy of that "nano-steak"?). However, just like life - it will escape.
Likely, it will be one of us, or more likely, out progeny - who "crack" this code, and hopefully, release it to the world. This of course will open up the script kiddie floodgates of nanotech. I might have this backward - and these misuses will cause the ban. But it will escape nonetheless.
However, we won't be ready for it - I have no idea how it will end or begin.
But, I think it will begin with nanotech logic gates, assembled as a "blob" style computer - maybe deep in a packaged well on a computer chip. Watch for it. That, I believe, will be the beginning of the end - that will lead to a revolutionary new beginning. Whether humans will be human or alive for that new beginning I can only say is unknowable to me...
They may get funding for this - only because Congress and the people as a whole are clueless when it comes to understanding what nanotech will ultimately bring. It is a pity that the same amount of funding (nay, much greater!) won't be made available to schools for math and science funding (as well as probably socialogical science funding, or whatnot)...
The best computer "history" books that I know of aren't history books at all - but rather books contemporary for the time, which examine computers as "state-of-the-art" machines, describing them and the advances as they were happenning for the period.
Finding such books can be a long and difficult task - almost all of them will be out of print. I suggest if you (or anyone else) take this route to build a "history", to check in the antique district where you live for used/rare/antique books - sometimes you will find the strangest things (like, I found one book that described how to build your own radio telescope - however it was tube based).
For something in print, the best computer history book I have come across is "Computer: A History of the Information Machine" by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray (ISBN 0-465-02989-2).
It starts out with basically Charles Babbage, moves on to Herman Hollerith, then into Remington Rand, NCR, and the birth of IBM (spawned from Hollerith's enterprise - which is a whole book unto itself), then into Lord Kelvin's Tide Predictor, the Harvard Mark I, the ABC, the MTI - then into ENIAC and EDVAC, EDSAC. Then it goes into business machines - UNIVAC, BINAC, IBM's early boxes, starting with the 701 - then onto the large iron - beginning with the 1401, moving into the System/360, then ending with IBM's decline with the PC market. Then, chapters on Project Whirlwind and SAGE, the SABRE system (airline reservation). Then, software, timesharing and simple computer languages (such as Fortran and BASIC), the rise of the minicomputers and Unix, finally ending with microcomputers, the internet, and more.
A very good read - not overly technical, not overly detailed - but a good "overall" history, with enough detail to see how it all came together, who the major (and minor) players were, etc. It isn't like other books which start out with calculators and end with the ENIAC - instead, it starts closer to our time, with the beginnings of a true computer, albeit a mechanical one (Babbage).
Actually, couple this book in a collection with "Herman Hollerith" by Geoffrey D. Austrian, "Hackers" by Steven Levy, and the recent American release of "The Difference Engine" by Doron Swade, and I daresay you will probably have as near as can be imagined "complete" history of computers (ok, there are a few other books I would add in - the book on the ENIAC, Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Soul of a New Machine, etc).
You know - I look at my bookshelf - seeing these tons of contemporary and historical computer books - I think to myself "Amazing - the sheer vastness of this industry - this hobby - seems almost overwhelming!" - makes me wonder why man still fights one another over petty things... sigh.
As has already been posted numerous times - this isn't much of a hack - a server out of the case sitting in a fake tree - YAWN...
/. and watch it melt down!
So, here is a free project - do it this year (not much time left, but I bet somebody could do it), or next - or whenever...
Get a piece of plywood or cardboard, cut it out in the shape of a christmas tree. Paint it (green for the tree, brown trunk, maybe some ornaments, or not).
Arrange a buttload of LEDs - red, green, yellow (and maybe blue if you are rich) - on the tree, by drilling holes (or, if you cut out the tree from pegboard, it is pre-drilled!) - now, here is where you can go wild:
1. Arrange them in a dense grid - and hook them up to the server to play tetris, etc (you know the routine). Add a web-cam, plus MP3 xmas songs through the sound card. Or use a SBC running Linux - or something.
2. Arrange them randomly, and have strings pulsing and flashing to the music. Maybe do a double "tree" - with two pieces of pegboard at right angles, and careful wire arrangement (to make it look like decorations as well?), and have the tree spin on a turntable (power would have to be applied via batteries and and SBC, and a wireless NIC).
Remember the web cam!
Post it to
Come on, someone should build this...soon!
Don't get me wrong - currently I am learning Perl by coding a somewhat complex (at least for a "first" project) CGI bookmark management system. I have yet to stray into the OO syntax of Perl yet, sticking with a functional approach for now. I am having fun, and enjoy coding in it. With that said, though...
I understand the sentiment of some when they equate Perl with "line noise" - we have all seen the lovely "one-line" Perl scripts which seem to "be all that and a bag of chips" - scripts that seem to do the impossible, sometimes.
I am sure we have all seen instances of this same type of coding within larger Perl systems, as well. I know I have looked inside some modules I have download, some code I have picked up in places, and nearly gagged at some of the stuff I have seen...!
Sure, it worked great - but unless you are a master regex wizard (regex is something I am still trying to grasp the complexities of - whoever came up with the system should be beat - I mean, if you want to do something complex, that is what coding is for - not everything should be done on the command line!) you can't understand it. Regex, unfortunately, seems like a "must-to-know" to do certain things in Perl, it seems. I don't want to really come across as knocking regex too much - I attribute that more to my lack of understanding. I am sure one day I will come to "love it".
I think what upsets me the most is that many of these "wizards" assume that because they wrote the regex code for a certain function, that others can easily read it. However, it is apparent by the number of people who refer to Perl as "line noise" that others find those expressions hard to read!
I think it would be better if those expressions were broken out/down into seperate lines, with comments explaining what each section is doing (why is commenting so hard for most programmers to do? You want fun? Wade through the Descent I code - this from a pro game house - hahahaha! - non-commented C code at its finest - but I digress). If they must, because of performance reasons (I don't honestly know for sure), provide the single line version as well, and put the multi-line version in comments or something.
Nothing makes me loath Perl more than trying to figure out the bits (that should be "huge bits") of regex almost invariably scattered throughout...