Yes, but the reason that this technique is better isn't because it is technically superior, but because it is usable by anyone such regular cameras can be used. (Of course picking common points is what the JPL software does, but I was just saying that it isn't done manually like some other 3d modeling programs I've used.) Obviously this won't affect high resolution 3d scanning. This sort of technology has the possibility to bring 3d scanning to the masses. (think of cheap point-and-shoot cameras which are usable by anyone as compared to a manual professional SLR camera or any sort of studio camera) So, JPL's software won't have much of an impact on your field, but will have at least the possibility to be very influential in the amateur 3d modeling community once it is open source, not to mention robot hobbyists.
We are, of course, refering to an autonomous robotic vehicle that can actually rely on these 3d rangings for navigation without intervention from NASA. It's not really that possible to have a 3d ranging resolution greater than the resolution of the 2d images (.5 mm accuracy with a 500m range is clearly not reasonable). The ability of the rover (and other software) to construct a meaningful 3d environment (not with a blue-screen or any other such tricks like manually selecting common points in tough parts of images) using real pictures is on a higher level than 3d scanning software, not to mention the concerted effort that NASA has put toward this software. For a project costing the better part of a billion dollars, JPL is going to be sure to create some very high-quality and very rigorously tested code.
Indeed, a lot of sharing IS going on! In fact, I myself have applied for a summer internship at JPL (and other places at NASA) for summer 2004 (I'm crossing my fingers). Even at my own college (i.e. university), we have a few NASA grants and research going on, even though we have a relatively small physics department (about a dozen physics majors per grade). As I mention in another post, Maestro is a publicly available version of NASA software for the rovers.
That being said, you do have a point as far as 3d imaging. However, I have looked far and wide for something of the calibre of the rovers' software for 3d ranging. The ability to calculate the 3d range info even free of all human intervention is proof of the robustness of the code, however. There is a lot of effort needed to convert research code into an integral part of an robust interplanetary exploration platform. Anyways, I appreciate the insight you have brought and you seem to have some reasonable experience in dealing with NASA in research projects.
If you're refering to Maestro, that is not the code I was refering to. If you look on this page, you will see this picture, which shows some pretty darn good 3d processing for only using a few still cameras! And if you look here, you will find this picture which shows a representation of what the Spirit rover's software uses to find its own way, without need of constant instruction from Earth. Pretty good software, if you ask me!
The public Maestro program is pretty slow, but so is Java in general for high-performance applications. Maestro doesn't actually generate the 3d range information from the raw images, it just displays it (and apparently is used to figure out the rover's schedule of stuff to do).
NASA's first "A" stands for "Aeronatics", and that's only part of their name. Lots of applications can be thought of. For instance, the source for their 3d ranging application would be very beneficial to many people. I mean, the rovers are able to compute their surroundings in 3d using only 2 cameras. The degree of success and repeatability of these 3d measurements far exceeds any other available 3d ranging software. This type of code could be useful for anyone who wants to make a 3d model of something using only a camera and some precise alignment. Indeed, JPL has a lot of experience in robotics and the gain in knowledge when such code is released is sure to be great for anyone in the field of robotics. Even the Darpa robot competition would be different with such technology freely available.
So, maybe flowers don't stop guns... at least they can stop landmines.
And although it's faster and safer to plant the seeds by plane, we could get rid of both the hippies AND the landmines if we told them they had to plant each seed by hand. Hippies don't work often, but you know how much they like flowers!
That's a very good thing. I wasn't aware of the exact requirement. I think that NASA sure learned its lesson! It's really too bad the polar lander didn't work, though... I mean, I think it'd be pretty cool to see pictures of the polar ice and such. That being said, NASA had to get back on track with better quality stuff, not just scraping by. Scraping by just DOESN'T work in space!
True, but you could still pretend that is it two signals, since the "virtual" position of the bounced signal is in a different spacial position as the direct signal. Thanks for the clarification.
I hope you aren't trying to imply that this is somehow faked, like how people foolishly think the moon landing was faked, in which case I would give you a lecture of how "rediculously ignorant that is" and how "we would be better if people didn't act as if everthing is a conspiracty." So, assuming that is NOT what you meant, I will give you a good answer:
The Deep Space Network is a world-wide network of radio dishes that NASA uses for sending and receiving communications from (you guessed it) craft in deep space. Some of these dishes are 70 meters in diameter! NASA said that "all eyes are on Mars," refering to this network, so all the resources of this network were focused on Opportunity. Also, the Opportunity rover had been transmitting just a simple signal, not a complex TV signal. Therefore, using some pretty well-written signal processing software, the Opportunity rover's signal was recognized, yes, all the way from Mars. It's not an easy thing, as you seem to understand, but JPL and NASA and the folks from the DSN are quite capable and have years of experience with such things.
Well, I believe that there are about 4 to 6 different ways of forming hematite. All but one happen only in the presence of water. The other way is through vulcanic means. With the vast assortment of tools on these rovers, it should be definitely possible to find out whether it was formed vulcanically or not. So, there you go!
Apparently, they didn't lose the signal from the rover all the way down like they did on Spirit. The Deep Space Network was able to see the signal from all the way from chute opening to contact. Also, the "bouncing" (which really wasn't) look of the signal is because of interference between the two signals coming to earth from the rover. Since both signals are heard, they had a "beating" effect, like the sound of two notes that are almost, but not quite, the same, which caused the signal to appear to change amplitude in a regular, periodic pattern (which looks like it's rolling).
I don't think it is so far-fetched, except that we haven't ever built anything like it before (for example we have never built anything of any size with nanotubes). It is certainly far-fetched in most people's minds, though. If we through enough money to the right people to get this done, it certainly can be constructed in ten years, I think.
Personally, I hope that NASA develops a space elevator, but it is pretty far-fetched (I would call myself a proponent of an elevator), and it sounds even more so. Frankly, I think it will be a while before anyone sticks out his head far enough to do this space elevator.
As far as an international effort, the only country I'd want to collaborate with is Russia. They have just as much experience in space as we do (well, they have more time logged in space, but they didn't get to walk on the moon). But really, I don't think that we should collaborate with anyone in a manned Mars mission. I think we should for the moon base (just Russia, though), maybe, but collaboration on something like a manned mission of this magnitude and newness should not be attempted. International collaboration is nothing new. There was actually intense talk of a collaborative Apollo-like program in 1967.
It was decided against not because we were afraid of each other, but because it was decided that it would cost about as much to try to integrate the different subsystems of our different space technologies as we would save by having them pay for some of it. And besides that, it will complicate stuff for the astronauts so that safety would be reduced, which is perhaps even more important than the lack of real money-saving from having a joint mission. (I have just read a ~100 page "Review of the Societ Space Program" for the Committee on Science and Astronautics in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1967.)
In other words, international collaboration is nice to talk about politically, but practically it is not so useful (*cough* ISS overspending).
Also, you guys like bashing Bush so much it must make even Democrats sick! I can't believe how ferociously you attack him and his party. I mean, it really is rediculous! How the heck can you compare him to Hitler (as some have hinted)? That is just nonsense.
Another thing, this is a very risky thing to propose right before an election that he would be very likely to win anyways (Howard Dean apparently wants to keep the Democrats from winning unless it's Dean who is nominated... I feel bad for the crap that the Democrats are going through now.).
But no, instead he will wax wildly about Man's need to discover new frontiers, to extend Man's reach into the universe. Look for wild ideas about multinational corporations mining minerals on the surface of Mars, polluting it just as we have done here on our own planet.
Are you kidding? How the heck can you pollute a sterile planet that is constantly being bombarded with radiation? It's not like we are destroying habitat for beautiful trees and woodland creatures! I mean, last time I checked, any POSSIBLE evidence we have for life on Mars was fossilized long ago. Then again, I don't mind so much your rediculous statement. It goes well with the rest of your post.
"Gigabit Ethernet (the XServe has 2 ports built in).. I think this will probably account for $300-$500 of that thousand right there)"
Are you kidding? Gigabit ethernet can be had for almost nothing these days! You can find a low-grade Gig-E for only like $15, if you look hard enough! Most new server boards have it built in, as well.
As far as ECC, that's pretty darn easy to find on Athlon MP or Opteron systems. In fact, it's usually required for those systems. As far as a competing board, I would choose the Tyan Thunder K8W dual Opteron board. This board has 8 dimms for up to 16 GB of DDR 333 RAM (well, the memory controller is in the CPU, so if you wanted to use the Athlon 64 FX51 CPU, you could get DDR400 dual-channel). This board also has 4 PCI-X slots, and an AGP 8x slot (you were actually thinking of doing WORK on this machine?!). It of course has Serial ATA and Gigabit LAN. This board can be had for around $450-$500. Granted, you have to get the CPUs and the memory and all, but this is all stuff that YOU can choose and upgrade simply in the future, besides the fact that it is higher in performance to the G5.
And you don't have to have all of the things that you mentioned! You can always use just infiniband instead of gigabit, or just simply use gigabit and Parallel ATA (like there's really much of a difference...). It all depends on the purpose of the system. If you just have a rendering farm (with very slow-rendering frames, for instance), a 100Mbit switched LAN would be fine. In that case, you could just use cheap Athlon 2800s or something and cheap non-ECC DDR and you have a price of less than $400 per node (you have to shop carefully). It all depends on the application. Heck. If you wanted to be different, you could use VIA's embedded motherboard thingy that's really tiny and make a cluster of those of about $200 a GHz node.
All that I mean to say is that this is only one in a wide range of options, not something that's just going to revolutionize everything.
Hopefully rediculous patents like this will bring about a reform in software patents. We MUST join together and voice our opinion on this issue, especially those of us in the United States.
Even so, this patent says: "The Recording Technique further provides a directory recorded on the CDROM which is transportable to other computers having the Recording Technique installed thereon." This is a recursive definition which, frankly, is much too vague and/or broad to possibly have been approved. This is rediculous! I have lost my faith in the whole patent system.
Does anybody have any idea on how to fight back against such rediculous patents (especially to prevent future ones)?
I was JUST googling for stuff about grammar and sentence diagramming on computers when I saw this story! Anyways, hopefully this will encourage people trying to make AI (AI capable of passing the Turing test) to use true grammatical parsing/analyzing (a non-open-source unsuccessful attempt is http://www.brainhat.com/). Also, perhaps this will encourage the development of an open-source grammar checker for OpenOffice.org or KOffice.
Negative refraction could definitely alllow you to have at least some sort of invisibility. If not the ability to make anything disappear like with some sort of "cloaking device", you could make materials that are completely invisible. They would be constructed of this material with negative refraction along with some other material, like fused quartz or something, so that you would have a composite material with a total index of refraction of zero.
I have thought about this subject before, and I did some research about different materials. Just think of glass. The only reason that pure glass reflects anything is that it has a different index of refraction as the air or vacuum or water that contacts it. If you notice clear ice that is in water, it is almost invisible since the index of refraction of ice is very close to that of liquid water.
There are many applications of this type of material. Does anybody have any ideas of some applications for a zero-refraction material? Perfectly clear windows? Practical jokes?
Yeah, I heard Mazingo was good, just like that other person said. Pocket PC Thoughts, the premier news website for the Pocket PC, very much recommends it, especially after they told us that Avantgo was going to cut off access.
Echelon is nothing. My dad sold them computer equipment and serviced it, too (well, they didn't tell him it was Echelon, but what else would you have a server with a database that searches through the email of the whole country for?).
Sure, Echelon is spying on all of our electronic communications, but what we should really be worried about is MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL!!! (the MLBB part is from the Simpsons)
Inmar Software ( http://www.inmarsoftware.com/ ) has a similarily optimized 3d engine for the Pocket PC. It has a game ( http://www.inmarsoftware.com/minigolf.htm ) that runs on StrongARM Pocket PCs and uses this impressive 3d engine.
With 128 MB CF cards costing only $50 and 64 MB RAM in many new Pocket PCs, storage is not much of an issue, compared to other PDAs. The new Pocket PCs (running Pocket PC 2002, http://www.pocketpc.com/ ) all use the StrongARM cpu, so these sort of 3d games will become more common place and of higher quality in Pocket PCs with the powerful StrongARM as the cpu. The new PPC 2002 devices do not have a problem with multi-button pressing, so the quality of gaming on them will continue to advance.
(The iPAQ 3635 only costs $300 after looking for a good deal and getting the $150 rebate from Compaq. I just ordered mine.)
Yeah, those are great machines... but they are not midrange. They are high-end! Well, at least compared to all other non-Pocket PC PDAs out there... Seriously. I mean, 206 MHz and a good battery with good color and the most expandable PDA in existence (no, it really is the most expandable palmtop in existance... PCMCIA everything... Video in/out... blaw-blaw-blaw...)!
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Yes, but the reason that this technique is better isn't because it is technically superior, but because it is usable by anyone such regular cameras can be used. (Of course picking common points is what the JPL software does, but I was just saying that it isn't done manually like some other 3d modeling programs I've used.) Obviously this won't affect high resolution 3d scanning. This sort of technology has the possibility to bring 3d scanning to the masses. (think of cheap point-and-shoot cameras which are usable by anyone as compared to a manual professional SLR camera or any sort of studio camera) So, JPL's software won't have much of an impact on your field, but will have at least the possibility to be very influential in the amateur 3d modeling community once it is open source, not to mention robot hobbyists.
We are, of course, refering to an autonomous robotic vehicle that can actually rely on these 3d rangings for navigation without intervention from NASA. It's not really that possible to have a 3d ranging resolution greater than the resolution of the 2d images (.5 mm accuracy with a 500m range is clearly not reasonable). The ability of the rover (and other software) to construct a meaningful 3d environment (not with a blue-screen or any other such tricks like manually selecting common points in tough parts of images) using real pictures is on a higher level than 3d scanning software, not to mention the concerted effort that NASA has put toward this software. For a project costing the better part of a billion dollars, JPL is going to be sure to create some very high-quality and very rigorously tested code.
Indeed, a lot of sharing IS going on! In fact, I myself have applied for a summer internship at JPL (and other places at NASA) for summer 2004 (I'm crossing my fingers). Even at my own college (i.e. university), we have a few NASA grants and research going on, even though we have a relatively small physics department (about a dozen physics majors per grade). As I mention in another post, Maestro is a publicly available version of NASA software for the rovers.
That being said, you do have a point as far as 3d imaging. However, I have looked far and wide for something of the calibre of the rovers' software for 3d ranging. The ability to calculate the 3d range info even free of all human intervention is proof of the robustness of the code, however. There is a lot of effort needed to convert research code into an integral part of an robust interplanetary exploration platform. Anyways, I appreciate the insight you have brought and you seem to have some reasonable experience in dealing with NASA in research projects.
If you're refering to Maestro, that is not the code I was refering to. If you look on this page, you will see this picture, which shows some pretty darn good 3d processing for only using a few still cameras! And if you look here, you will find this picture which shows a representation of what the Spirit rover's software uses to find its own way, without need of constant instruction from Earth. Pretty good software, if you ask me! The public Maestro program is pretty slow, but so is Java in general for high-performance applications. Maestro doesn't actually generate the 3d range information from the raw images, it just displays it (and apparently is used to figure out the rover's schedule of stuff to do).
NASA's first "A" stands for "Aeronatics", and that's only part of their name. Lots of applications can be thought of. For instance, the source for their 3d ranging application would be very beneficial to many people. I mean, the rovers are able to compute their surroundings in 3d using only 2 cameras. The degree of success and repeatability of these 3d measurements far exceeds any other available 3d ranging software. This type of code could be useful for anyone who wants to make a 3d model of something using only a camera and some precise alignment. Indeed, JPL has a lot of experience in robotics and the gain in knowledge when such code is released is sure to be great for anyone in the field of robotics. Even the Darpa robot competition would be different with such technology freely available.
It's a joke, not an attack.
So, maybe flowers don't stop guns... at least they can stop landmines.
And although it's faster and safer to plant the seeds by plane, we could get rid of both the hippies AND the landmines if we told them they had to plant each seed by hand. Hippies don't work often, but you know how much they like flowers!
That's a very good thing. I wasn't aware of the exact requirement. I think that NASA sure learned its lesson! It's really too bad the polar lander didn't work, though... I mean, I think it'd be pretty cool to see pictures of the polar ice and such. That being said, NASA had to get back on track with better quality stuff, not just scraping by. Scraping by just DOESN'T work in space!
True, but you could still pretend that is it two signals, since the "virtual" position of the bounced signal is in a different spacial position as the direct signal. Thanks for the clarification.
I hope you aren't trying to imply that this is somehow faked, like how people foolishly think the moon landing was faked, in which case I would give you a lecture of how "rediculously ignorant that is" and how "we would be better if people didn't act as if everthing is a conspiracty."
So, assuming that is NOT what you meant, I will give you a good answer:
The Deep Space Network is a world-wide network of radio dishes that NASA uses for sending and receiving communications from (you guessed it) craft in deep space. Some of these dishes are 70 meters in diameter! NASA said that "all eyes are on Mars," refering to this network, so all the resources of this network were focused on Opportunity. Also, the Opportunity rover had been transmitting just a simple signal, not a complex TV signal. Therefore, using some pretty well-written signal processing software, the Opportunity rover's signal was recognized, yes, all the way from Mars. It's not an easy thing, as you seem to understand, but JPL and NASA and the folks from the DSN are quite capable and have years of experience with such things.
Well, I believe that there are about 4 to 6 different ways of forming hematite. All but one happen only in the presence of water. The other way is through vulcanic means. With the vast assortment of tools on these rovers, it should be definitely possible to find out whether it was formed vulcanically or not. So, there you go!
Apparently, they didn't lose the signal from the rover all the way down like they did on Spirit. The Deep Space Network was able to see the signal from all the way from chute opening to contact. Also, the "bouncing" (which really wasn't) look of the signal is because of interference between the two signals coming to earth from the rover. Since both signals are heard, they had a "beating" effect, like the sound of two notes that are almost, but not quite, the same, which caused the signal to appear to change amplitude in a regular, periodic pattern (which looks like it's rolling).
Yes. But there'd be absolutely no reason to do so. I mean, there's not really a risk of ground water contamination on Mars...
I don't think it is so far-fetched, except that we haven't ever built anything like it before (for example we have never built anything of any size with nanotubes). It is certainly far-fetched in most people's minds, though. If we through enough money to the right people to get this done, it certainly can be constructed in ten years, I think.
I was not refering to you, but rather to the many other thinly veiled political rantings of others. (Sorry for the confusion.)
Personally, I hope that NASA develops a space elevator, but it is pretty far-fetched (I would call myself a proponent of an elevator), and it sounds even more so. Frankly, I think it will be a while before anyone sticks out his head far enough to do this space elevator.
As far as an international effort, the only country I'd want to collaborate with is Russia. They have just as much experience in space as we do (well, they have more time logged in space, but they didn't get to walk on the moon). But really, I don't think that we should collaborate with anyone in a manned Mars mission. I think we should for the moon base (just Russia, though), maybe, but collaboration on something like a manned mission of this magnitude and newness should not be attempted. International collaboration is nothing new. There was actually intense talk of a collaborative Apollo-like program in 1967.
It was decided against not because we were afraid of each other, but because it was decided that it would cost about as much to try to integrate the different subsystems of our different space technologies as we would save by having them pay for some of it. And besides that, it will complicate stuff for the astronauts so that safety would be reduced, which is perhaps even more important than the lack of real money-saving from having a joint mission. (I have just read a ~100 page "Review of the Societ Space Program" for the Committee on Science and Astronautics in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1967.)
In other words, international collaboration is nice to talk about politically, but practically it is not so useful (*cough* ISS overspending).
Also, you guys like bashing Bush so much it must make even Democrats sick! I can't believe how ferociously you attack him and his party. I mean, it really is rediculous! How the heck can you compare him to Hitler (as some have hinted)? That is just nonsense.
Another thing, this is a very risky thing to propose right before an election that he would be very likely to win anyways (Howard Dean apparently wants to keep the Democrats from winning unless it's Dean who is nominated... I feel bad for the crap that the Democrats are going through now.).
But no, instead he will wax wildly about Man's need to discover new frontiers, to extend Man's reach into the universe. Look for wild ideas about multinational corporations mining minerals on the surface of Mars, polluting it just as we have done here on our own planet.
Are you kidding? How the heck can you pollute a sterile planet that is constantly being bombarded with radiation? It's not like we are destroying habitat for beautiful trees and woodland creatures! I mean, last time I checked, any POSSIBLE evidence we have for life on Mars was fossilized long ago. Then again, I don't mind so much your rediculous statement. It goes well with the rest of your post.
"Gigabit Ethernet (the XServe has 2 ports built in).. I think this will probably account for $300-$500 of that thousand right there)" Are you kidding? Gigabit ethernet can be had for almost nothing these days! You can find a low-grade Gig-E for only like $15, if you look hard enough! Most new server boards have it built in, as well. As far as ECC, that's pretty darn easy to find on Athlon MP or Opteron systems. In fact, it's usually required for those systems. As far as a competing board, I would choose the Tyan Thunder K8W dual Opteron board. This board has 8 dimms for up to 16 GB of DDR 333 RAM (well, the memory controller is in the CPU, so if you wanted to use the Athlon 64 FX51 CPU, you could get DDR400 dual-channel). This board also has 4 PCI-X slots, and an AGP 8x slot (you were actually thinking of doing WORK on this machine?!). It of course has Serial ATA and Gigabit LAN. This board can be had for around $450-$500. Granted, you have to get the CPUs and the memory and all, but this is all stuff that YOU can choose and upgrade simply in the future, besides the fact that it is higher in performance to the G5. And you don't have to have all of the things that you mentioned! You can always use just infiniband instead of gigabit, or just simply use gigabit and Parallel ATA (like there's really much of a difference...). It all depends on the purpose of the system. If you just have a rendering farm (with very slow-rendering frames, for instance), a 100Mbit switched LAN would be fine. In that case, you could just use cheap Athlon 2800s or something and cheap non-ECC DDR and you have a price of less than $400 per node (you have to shop carefully). It all depends on the application. Heck. If you wanted to be different, you could use VIA's embedded motherboard thingy that's really tiny and make a cluster of those of about $200 a GHz node. All that I mean to say is that this is only one in a wide range of options, not something that's just going to revolutionize everything.
Hopefully rediculous patents like this will bring about a reform in software patents. We MUST join together and voice our opinion on this issue, especially those of us in the United States.
Even so, this patent says: "The Recording Technique further provides a directory recorded on the CDROM which is transportable to other computers having the Recording Technique installed thereon."
This is a recursive definition which, frankly, is much too vague and/or broad to possibly have been approved. This is rediculous! I have lost my faith in the whole patent system.
Does anybody have any idea on how to fight back against such rediculous patents (especially to prevent future ones)?
I was JUST googling for stuff about grammar and sentence diagramming on computers when I saw this story! Anyways, hopefully this will encourage people trying to make AI (AI capable of passing the Turing test) to use true grammatical parsing/analyzing (a non-open-source unsuccessful attempt is http://www.brainhat.com/). Also, perhaps this will encourage the development of an open-source grammar checker for OpenOffice.org or KOffice.
Negative refraction could definitely alllow you to have at least some sort of invisibility. If not the ability to make anything disappear like with some sort of "cloaking device", you could make materials that are completely invisible. They would be constructed of this material with negative refraction along with some other material, like fused quartz or something, so that you would have a composite material with a total index of refraction of zero.
I have thought about this subject before, and I did some research about different materials. Just think of glass. The only reason that pure glass reflects anything is that it has a different index of refraction as the air or vacuum or water that contacts it. If you notice clear ice that is in water, it is almost invisible since the index of refraction of ice is very close to that of liquid water.
There are many applications of this type of material. Does anybody have any ideas of some applications for a zero-refraction material? Perfectly clear windows? Practical jokes?
Yeah, I heard Mazingo was good, just like that other person said. Pocket PC Thoughts, the premier news website for the Pocket PC, very much recommends it, especially after they told us that Avantgo was going to cut off access.
Echelon is nothing. My dad sold them computer equipment and serviced it, too (well, they didn't tell him it was Echelon, but what else would you have a server with a database that searches through the email of the whole country for?). Sure, Echelon is spying on all of our electronic communications, but what we should really be worried about is MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL!!! (the MLBB part is from the Simpsons)
Inmar Software ( http://www.inmarsoftware.com/ ) has a similarily optimized 3d engine for the Pocket PC. It has a game ( http://www.inmarsoftware.com/minigolf.htm ) that runs on StrongARM Pocket PCs and uses this impressive 3d engine. With 128 MB CF cards costing only $50 and 64 MB RAM in many new Pocket PCs, storage is not much of an issue, compared to other PDAs. The new Pocket PCs (running Pocket PC 2002, http://www.pocketpc.com/ ) all use the StrongARM cpu, so these sort of 3d games will become more common place and of higher quality in Pocket PCs with the powerful StrongARM as the cpu. The new PPC 2002 devices do not have a problem with multi-button pressing, so the quality of gaming on them will continue to advance. (The iPAQ 3635 only costs $300 after looking for a good deal and getting the $150 rebate from Compaq. I just ordered mine.)
Yeah, those are great machines... but they are not midrange. They are high-end! Well, at least compared to all other non-Pocket PC PDAs out there... Seriously. I mean, 206 MHz and a good battery with good color and the most expandable PDA in existence (no, it really is the most expandable palmtop in existance... PCMCIA everything... Video in/out... blaw-blaw-blaw...)!